The Full Works Concert - Monday 11 August, 8pm
Handel, Mozart, Fauré, Franz Léhar and Max Bruch are the great composers in tonight's Concert.
Join Jane Jones for a wonderfully sunny Full Works Concert tonight, starting with the overture to The Land of Smiles by Franz Léhar (pictured). This was one of Lehár's later works, and has a bittersweet ending which the Viennese loved. The title refers to the Chinese custom of smiling, whatever happens in life. The show was largely written around the tenor Richard Tauber, for whom Léhar wrote the hit song of the operetta, 'You are my heart's delight. Tauber also sang in the show in London, and was called back to give countless encores of the song.
There's also a trip to Scotland with Max Bruch’s evocative Scottish Fantasy. It received its UK premiere while Bruch was rather grumpily in charge of the Liverpool Philharmonic in 1881, some 17 years before he took over at the Scottish Orchestra. Despite the fact that the composer was a virtual stranger to Scotland at the time he wrote this piece, there is nothing to suggest that the work is based on anything other than wholly authentic Scottish melodies. Its opening movement uses ‘Auld Rob Morris’; from there, we move on to ‘Dusty Miller’, before ‘I’m down for lack of Johnnie’ in the third movement and, to conclude, the ebullient ‘Scots Wha Hae’ in the finale.
Scotland's Finest: 15 musical heroes that put Scotland on the classical map >
Also on the programme, one of Mozart’s most famous symphonies, and a wonderful new recording of Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine, not due for release until next month.
Franz Léhar: The Land of Smiles – Overture
Richard Bonynge conducts the English Chamber Orchestra
Max Bruch: Scottish Fantasy Opus 46
Violin: Tasmin Little
Vernon Handley conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No.41 in C major K.551
Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields
Gabriel Fauré: Cantique de Jean Racine Opus 11
Stephen Cleobury conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Choir of King's College, Cambridge
George Frideric Handel: Water Music Suite No.1 in F major
European Union Baroque Orchestra
