The Full Works Concert - Wednesday 14 May 2014
Smetana, Mozart, Bach and Philip Glass are the composers on tonight's menu.
Smetana's The Bartered Bride is a comic opera which tells the story of how, after a late surprise revelation, true love prevails over the combined efforts of ambitious parents and a scheming marriage broker. The overture, often performed as a concert piece independently from the opera, was, unusually, composed before almost any of the other music had been written.
The period in which Mozart wrote his divertimenti for string quartet and winds was filled with major life events for the composer, including the death of his mother. In these works, however, Mozart remained aloof from all of his personal dramas, preferring to reflect memories of the warm Italian sun on his recent travels. We hear the Divertimento in F major tonight.
The Beijing-born guitarist Xuefei Yang's first album of baroque music was an all-Bach programme featuring three concertos newly arranged for guitar and string quartet. Her hope was that these concertos would become a substantial and significant addition to the guitar repertoire and would create new opportunities to bring the instrument to a wider audience. We hear the arrangement of Bach's Keyboard Concerto in D minor.
Philip Glass' Heroes Symphony is based on the seminal rock album by David Bowie which in its day had a profound influence on music across a range of different genres. Two decades later, Glass - pictured - went back to the original material, using it as a point of departure and inspiration, much as composers of the past have based their work on their contemporaries. Using themes from Heroes, Glass made a completely new composition in six movements, each based on a track from Heroes, with an overall dramatic structure that made it suitable for dance.
Bedrich Smetana: The Bartered Bride – Overture
Christoph von Dohnanyi conducts the Cleveland Orchestra
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Divertimento in F major K.247
Petter Sundkvist conducts the Swedish Chamber Orchestra
Johann Sebastian Bach: Keyboard Concerto in D minor BWV.1052
Arranged for guitar and string quartet
Guitar: Xue Fei Yang
Elias String Quartet
Philip Glass: Heroes Symphony
Marin Alsop conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
