The Full Works Concert - Friday 13 December 2013

Music spanning the 18th to 20th centuries on tonight's concert - from Bach Jr. to Jim Morrison.

Tonight's concert opens with a piece that violin virtuoso Nigel Kennedy (pictured) put together with Jaz Coleman - composer and former lead vocalist of Killing Joke. In 1999 the two worked on a large-scale orchestral work based on songs by the influential and often controversial American band The Doors. Arranged on a grand cinematic scale, the various songs are used as a springboard for a piece that works well as a coherent composition rather than a simple reworking of songs in an orchestral arrangement.

Chopin's Andante spianato et grande polonaise brillante in E-flat major was composed between 1830 and 1834. The polonaise came first in 1830-31. Then, in 1834, Chopin wrote an Andante spianato in G for piano which he added to the start of the piece, and joined the two sections with a fanfare-like sequence. Chopin’s first work, written at the age of seven had been a polonaise. The Grande polonaise brillante was to be the last such he would compose for several years. The moving 2002 film The Pianist concludes with this piece.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach wrote a considerable quantity of music for the harpsichord. But it was perhaps because of the demands of his position as court musician to Frederick the Great that he came to arrange some of his harpsichord concertos for other instruments, particularly for flute, cello and oboe. The Concerto in A major is a version of a harpsichord concerto of 1753; the arrangement for flute was made in the same year.

Nigel Kennedy/Jaz Coleman: The Doors Concerto
Violin: Nigel Kennedy
Peter Scholes conducts the Prague Symphony Orchestra

Frederic Chopin: Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise
Piano: Ingolf Wunder

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: Flute Concerto in A major
Flute: Patrick Gallois
Kevin Mallon conducts Toronto Camerata