Sunday 3 October 2010

Christopher Adey conductor
Emmanuel Despax piano

Shostakovich
Festival Overture

Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 1

Sibelius
Symphony No. 1

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about Emmanuel Despax

The Festival Overture by Shostakovich begins with a brass fanfare, acting as a dramatic curtain-raiser of the RTWSO’s 89th season.  From its breathless opening to the rousing finish, this vibrant piece has plenty of joy.  One musicologist, Lebedinsky, said it’s a ‘brilliant effervescent work, with its vivacious energy spilling over like uncorked champagne.’

Tchaikovsky had a natural melodic gift that few have equalled.  His Piano Concerto No. 1 is packed full of irresistible tunes which emerge spontaneously from a rich, exuberant orchestral palette to stunning effect.  This passionate and deeply lyrical work has become one of his most popular.

Sibelius’s First Symphony is characterised by sweeping, ‘nationalistic’ melodies of enormous determination and cumulative force, sometimes underpinned with long, support-beam pedal points.  His radically Finnish style is pushed to the forefront of this watershed work, together with influences of Russian music.  Sibelius denied any programmatic concept to his symphony, although there are suggestions of forests, mountains or snowscapes.

Sun 7 November 2010

Roderick Dunk conductor
Nicola Benedetti violin

Beethoven
Coriolan Overture

Beethoven
Violin Concerto

Dvořák
Symphony No. 7

Photo (c) Rhys Frampton

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about Nicola Benedetti

Coriolan is one of Beethoven’s greatest overtures. Written to accompany Collin’s play, it blends musical and theatrical ideas to describe the powerful tragedy.  The tortured state of the title character, Coriolanus, is conveyed by a restless theme, while a gentle section represents the pleas of the warrior’s wife and mother, before his death.

The glory of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto lies in its reflective nature rather than any outward virtuosity.  This well-balanced classical masterpiece demands absolute clarity to reveal its beauty.  It’s a supreme challenge for violinists seeking to emphasise the noble simplicity and inwardly expressive tenderness of the music.

Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony offers a depth of emotional density not previously found in his symphonic writing.  The prime feature is its dramatic quality with strong contrasts.  His melodies contain leaps of large intervals, while rhythm has a forceful effect on development, as Dvořák adopts a carefree musical language, less reliant on Slavonic tone.

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Sunday 5 December 2010

Neil Thomson conductor
Jong-Gyung Park & Anthony Zerpa-Falcon piano
Derek Watmough narrator

Weber orch. Berlioz
Invitation to the Dance

Saint-Saëns
The Carnival of Animals

Milhaud
Scaramouche (last movement)

Philip Lane
Overture on French Carols

Milhaud
Le Boeuf sur le Toit

Bryan Kelly
Scrooge (world première)

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about Jong-Gyung Park

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about Anthony Zerpa-Falcon

Fresh, graceful, and spirited, Weber’s work is the very apotheosis of the dance and tells the story of a young couple at a ball.  The faithful orchestration by Berlioz invites comparisons to his Symphonie Fantastique.

Saint-Saëns’s famous musical menagerie was composed as a joke for friends.  Yet The Carnival of Animals became one of the best-loved pieces by the French Romantic through its portraits of the elephant, donkeys, fish, swan and other animals.

Two incidental pieces by Milhaud continue the focus on French composers, although Latin American music colours the Brazileira from Scaramouche for two pianos and the Brazilian medley of tangos and maxixes comprising Le Boeuf sur le Toit.  There’s no disguising the origins of Philip Lane’s seasonal arrangements which were inspired by a visit to Bayeux at Christmas.

The first performance of Scrooge offers a unique mix of spoken extracts from Charles Dickens’s classic, A Christmas Carol, together with detailed characterisations portrayed in Bryan Kelly’s music.  This new work opens with ghostly scenes from the well-loved tale and ends with the fun and merry-making of Mr Fezziwig’s Christmas ball.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Roderick Dunk conductor
Richard Simpson oboe

Mozart
Overture, ‘Don Giovanni’

R. Strauss
Oboe Concerto

Mahler
Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’

Richard Simpson

There’s a perilous balance of humour and tragedy in Mozart’s popular overture, Don Giovanni.  It begins with the same dark, imposing music that is used to introduce the ‘stone guest’ in the last act.  The faster section that follows may describe the impetuous, pleasure-seeking Don, who is oblivious to consequences.

Richard Strauss was one of the last great Romantic composers and a true master of the orchestra.  The Oboe Concerto was a late-flowering bloom of the composer’s golden ‘Indian summer’.  His introspective piece uses a classical orchestra and breathes a distinctly Mozartian air with fresh, joyous, effortless music.

Mahler’s music is perhaps the ultimate expression of Romantic feeling and sensibility – the swansong of that visionary era.  His First Symphony is full of the sounds of nature, as well as dance melodies and rhythms.  In the finale, Mahler mobilises all the resources of the post-Wagnerian orchestra in a large-scale dramatic narrative to create an overwhelming volume of sound.

Sunday 6 March 2011

Neil Thomson conductor
Stephen Hough piano

Liszt
Symphonic Poem, ‘Les Preludes’

Liszt
Piano Concerto No. 2

Grieg
‘Peer Gynt’, Suite No. 1

Borodin
Symphony No. 2

Photo (c) Grant Hiroshima

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about Stephen Hough

Originally intended as the overture to a choral work, Les Preludes is one of 12 ‘symphonic poems’ by Liszt.  Revolutionary in its conception, his free-form symphony is based on a poem by the Romantic poet Lamartine.

It was Liszt’s dazzling mastery of the keyboard and his love of orchestral effects that inspired his poetic Second Piano Concerto. This important work opens in a dreamy, romantic vein and the piano enters almost unnoticed.  But the pace and drama builds to a spectacular and triumphant ending.

Four evocative sound-pictures are taken from Grieg’s first suite of incidental music for Ibsen’s great poetic drama, Peer Gynt.  The music transports us from sunrise over the Sahara to the wild revels in the underground domain of the mountain king with an exotic Moroccan dance along the way.

Borodin’s reputation rests on a remarkably small number of works.  These original, high quality pieces include his popular Second Symphony, which is compact and organically conceived containing an abundance of attractive themes.

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Sunday 3 April 2011

Roderick Dunk conductor
Nicola Benedetti violin
Leonard Elschenbroich cello

Brahms
Academic Festival Overture

Brahms
Double Concerto

Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’

Photo (c) Rhys Frampton

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about Nicola Benedetti

Photo (c) Felix Broede

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about Leonard Elschenbroich

Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture sparkles with some of his finest orchestral writing.  Containing about half a dozen popular tunes and student drinking songs, there’s a masterful balance of serious and light-hearted elements in a piece that brims with an irrepressible sense of fun.

The deeply romantic Concerto for Violin and Cello was the final work by Brahms involving an orchestra.  The opening has brilliant cadenzas for each instrument followed by many delicate, decorative passages.  The central movement is built from one of Brahms’ most expressive melodies, which almost takes on a Puccinian intensity. The finale is a sonata-rondo in the gypsy style that ends in great happiness.

The composers of the Romantic era were caught up in an electric atmosphere of revolution and protest.  New ideals of freedom and individualism fired the imagination of great artists like Beethoven.  His Third Symphony is a landmark of the period composed on an heroic scale.  From triumph to despair, it broke the symphonic mould.