Commissioned by the BBC and performed tonight for the first time, Philip Grange’s Violin Concerto takes flight into the world around us. At times, it’s inspired by massed forces from nature: swarms of bees and murmurations of starlings, plagues of locusts and clouds of bats. But, at others, the soloist – violin virtuoso Carolin Widmann – is left isolated and alone. Stravinsky’s singing nightingale soars away to the court of a Chinese emperor in his predictably unpredictable ballet, before Tchaikovsky’s bold and beguiling First Symphony heralds the imminent arrival of the fierce Manchester winter.
