26 Nov 2024, Maida Vale Studios
BBC Symphony Orchestra 2024/25 Jonathan Bloxham conducts Wagner, Weill, Price and Ives
Jonathan Bloxham conducts Wagner, Weill, Price and Ives
A musical journey from to the USA with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Jonathan Bloxham.
A musical journey from to the USA with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Jonathan Bloxham.
About This Event
Richard Wagner’s atmospheric Prelude to his opera Lohengrin(1848) is followed by Kurt Weill’s visceral response in 1941 to the bombing of Pearl Harbour – his setting of four powerful poems by the great American poet Walt Whitman, sung by BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist James Atkinson. Weill, the German-born Jewish émigré, fled Nazi in 1933 and made his home in the USA.
There’s a short lyrical work for strings by Florence Price, the first African-American woman recognized as an orchestral composer, and the concert ends with Charles Ives’ recreation (complete with the sound of a marching band) of Decoration Day – the US federal holiday honouring US military personnel who have died in line of duty. It’s one of the four colourful movements from Ives’ A New England Holiday Symphony (1887-1913).