Southbank Sinfonia live from Berlin, tonight: including Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Bosnian-inspired piano concerto

Visegrad, the stone bridge over the Drina,
inspiration for Ivo Andrić's novel and Cheryl Frances-Hoad's concerto

With the orchestra unable to perform live, the Southbank Sinfonia is presenting a recording of its German debut on-line tonight. The concert, recorded at the 2018 Young Euro Classic Festival in Berlin, features Simon Over conducting Cheryl Frances-Hoad's piano concerto Between the Skies, the River and the Hills with pianist Ivana Gavrić, plus Mozart's Symphony No.31 ‘Paris’ and Beethoven's Symphony No.2. The broadcast is at 8pm tonight, head over to the orchestra's website for details.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s piano concerto takes us to Bosnia and a bridge over the river Drina. The work has three inspirations, Ivo Andrić's wonderful book The Bridge of the Drina (do read it if you haven't already), Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major and its bounding final movement, fuelled by a Croatian folk tune, and the Sarajevan folk-tune Kad ja pođoh na Bembašu (When I went to Bembasa). All three movements of Frances-Hoad's concerto take quotes from Andrić's book as their starting points. The work was premiered by Simon Over, Ivana Gavrić and the Southbank Sinfonia in June 2018.