The Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman is making a welcome appearance in London on Saturday 27 January 2018 when he is the soloist in Leonard Bernstein's Serenade with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conductor David Charles Abell, as part of an all-Bernstein programme which includes the overture to Candide and Songfest.
Serenade, a violin concerto in all but name, is Bernstein's musical philosophical reflection on Plato, in complete contrast to the vibrancy of the Candide overture which reflects the very different work of Voltaire. Rounding off the evening is Songfest, an orchestral song-cycle which uses and extravagant five soloists ( Sophia Burgos soprano,
J’Nai Bridges mezzo-soprano,
Fleur Barron mezzo-soprano,
Nicky Spence tenor,
Nmon Ford baritone) and sets poems ranging from Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe to Gertrude Stein and EE Cummings. A highly eclectic work, Songfest was commissioned for the American bicentennial, Bernstein tried to encapsulate 300 years of American history in one work.
Violinist Vadim Guzman has been playing the Serenade for over 20 years (he debuted the piece playing for Hamburg Ballet) and thinks of it as one of the greatest works of the 20th century. It is based on Plato's Symposium and in each of the movements one of the philosophers (Phaedrus, Aristophanes, Eryximachus, Agathon and Socrates) speaks on love. It is an approachable work, written for soloists, strings, harp and percussion, yet tricky too, Guzman calls the third movement one of the most demanding things he has ever played. (There is an interesting interview with Guzman talking about the Serenade on The Strad website)
The event is part of the BBC's Total Immersion Day on Bernstein, and during the day you can catch the BBC Singers in the Missa Brevis and Chichester Psalms, and musicians from the Guildhall School of Music in smaller scale pieces
Full details from the Barbican website.
Tuesday 23 January 2018
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts this month
-
Septura I first became aware of the brass septet, Septura , when noting their 2017/18 concert series Kleptomania at St John's Smith...
-
Britten: Death in Venice - Tim Mead, Leo Dixon - Royal Opera ((c) ROH 2019 photographed by Catherine Ashmore) 2019 seems to have b...
-
Mural: chamber music by Gabriel Vicéns; Stradivarius Reviewed 15 April 2024 At times fierce and concentrated, Gabriel Vicéns music can evok...
-
Ben Goldscheider Jörg Widmann, Beethoven, Schumann, Huw Watkins, York Bowen; Ben Goldscheider, Richard Uttley; Wigmore Hall Reviewed 17 Marc...
-
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Jessica Cottis Catalyst : Coleridge-Taylor, Julius Eastman, Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Prokofiev...
-
Thomas Elwin as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at West Green House Opera in 2021(Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis) West Green House...
-
Listening to the sublime closing duet of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea it is perhaps difficult for us to accept that this music ...
-
Bizet: Carmen, Act One - Blaise Malaba, Aighul Akhmetshina - Royal Opera House (Photo: ROH/Camilla Greenwell) Bizet: Carmen ; Aigul Akhmets...
-
Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra I get all sorts of mail, people sending my information on concerts and recordings. Everything gets gl...
-
Wagner: Das Rheingold - Staatsoper Berlin, 2022 (Photo: Monika Rittershaus) Wagner: The Ring of the Nibelungen; Tomasz Konieczny, Rolando V...
No comments:
Post a Comment