The Musgrave Portrait concert celebrates her 90th birthday

Thea Musgrave (Photo Bryan Sheffield)

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra has a long association with the work of Thea Musgrave, it performed a number of her early compositions in the 1950s including her ballet suite A Tale for Thieves in 1957. Tonight (15 June 2018) the orchestra will be celebrating the composer's 90th birthday with a concert in her presence at Glasgow City Halls. [see my 90th birthday interview with Thea Musgrave].

Conducted by Jac van Steen the orchestra will be performing Musgrave's Song of the Enchanter, Two's Company, Memento Vitae: Concerto in Homage to Beethoven, and Phoenix Rising. For Two's Company the orchestra will be joined by percussionist Evelyn Glennie and oboist Nicholas Daniel; the work was written for them in 2005 and commissioned by the BBC.

Also in the programme will be Short Symphony (Symphony No.2) by Aaron Copland, with whom Musgrave studied at Tanglewood in the 1950s, and Celebration by Richard Rodney Bennett who was a lifelong friend of Thea Musgrave's.

Further details from the BBC website. The concert is being recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3.