The Full Works Concert: Thursday 12 February 2015, 8pm
Catherine Bott presents a concert jam packed with favourite works from the Classic FM Hall of Fame, including tales from the exotic orient courtesy of Rimsky-Korsakov.
Tonight's concert opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik . It's a piece that Mozart never published in his lifetime. His widow, Constanze, later sold it in a job lot of his music to a publisher in 1799, to raise funds.
Gerald Finzi 's Clarinet Concerto in C minor was written during a period immediately following the war years when the composer seemed to gain fresh impetus. It was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1949, taking place that year in Hereford. Sadly, within just a couple of years, Finzi would be told of a fatal illness; he died in 1956 aged 55. His output, though small, is revered more and more every year.
Beethoven composed his Romance No. 2 in 1803 and the sweet, innocent melodies belie the altogether more tumultuous events of the composer’s personal life at the time; he was coming to terms with his deafness, probably for the first time. The delicate, youthful phrasing of the violin line suggests a composer finding some brief respite through the escapism of writing music. Indeed, Beethoven seems to have continually found solace in this way throughout the early 1800s, when his awareness of his deteriorating hearing was at its most acute. All angst is absent from the page. In its place, we find music that suggests that all is well. As Beethoven knew all too clearly, though, this was far from the case.
Rimsky-Korsakov ’s Scheherazade finishes the concert, one of the most colourful, evocative and descriptive scores in all classical music, guaranteed to capture the imagination of everyone who hears it, young or old.
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade: An exhilarating journey of love, intrigue and adventure >:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
Anton Steck conducts Concerto Cologne
Gerald Finzi: Clarinet Concerto
Clarinet: David Campbell
Nicholas Collon conducts Aurora Orchestra
Ludwig van Beethoven: Romance No.2
Violin: Oscar Shumsky
Andrew Davis conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
Gerard Schwarz conducts the Seattle Symphony Orchestra