大象传媒

A week of programmes with the 大象传媒 National of Orchestra of Wales, featuring works by Schumann and music inspired by springtime.

Presented by Katie Derham.

The 大象传媒 NOW's Principal Conductor Thomas S酶nderg氓rd made his first tour of mid and north Wales with the orchestra last month, featuring programmes infused with the breath of spring air.

They began their journey together at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, and music by Thomas's fellow Dane C.F.E. Hornemann. Hornemann was one of the great driving forces of music in Denmark in the nineteenth century, and in the 1860s he visited the evocative ruins of the royal castle at Gurre, near Elsinore. So when the Danish playwright Holger Drachmann wrote a tragedy based on the ballad of Valdemar and Tove, set in the castle, Hornemann was the natural choice to write the incidental music. His atmospheric overture has become his best known work, with its "hunting horn" motifs - though today the legend of Gurre castle is perhaps better known through a work by a different composer, Schoenberg's Gurrelieder.

Thomas also brings two spring pictures from Northern climes, where the release from dark winter is more keenly felt than in our British Isles. Sibelius's Spring Song is tinged with melancholy, whereas Glazunov's symphonic poem is altogether more cheery and colourful.

Robert Plane is Principal Clarinet with the 大象传媒 National Orchestra of Wales, but today he steps forward to the front of the stage for Mozart's glorious Clarinet Concerto. Robert plays the work on the instrument for which it was originally written, the basset clarinet, with an altogether richer and warmer sound than the standard instrument.

Stravinsky's Rite of Spring closes the week on Friday, but today Thomas S酶nderg氓rd conducts his Symphony in C, written over a quarter of a century later. This is the composer in his neoclassical vein, harking back to the Vienna of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Symphony in C may be lacking the massive orchestral force of the earlier ballets, but it's no less inventive. "My symphony is going to be Classical in spirit," Stravinsky wrote, "more concise in its form than Beethoven".

Plus more Russian music: Prokofiev's fiery First Piano Concerto with Radio 3 New Generation Artist Christian Ihle Hadland.

Finally today we've more music from North Wales, a concert from Llandudno with the 大象传媒 NOW's previous Principal Conductor Thierry Fischer. Schumann's youthful first symphony dates from 1841, the year after his marriage to Clara - it's inventive and playful, full of the joys of spring.

Horneman: Gurre Overture
Sibelius: Spring Song, Op. 16
2.15pm
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622
with Robert Plane (clarinet)
2.40pm
Glazunov: Spring (Vesna) - Musical Picture, Op. 34
Stravinsky: Symphony in C
大象传媒 National Orchestra of Wales,
Thomas S酶nderg氓rd (conductor).

3.20pm
Prokofiev: Concerto no. 1 in D flat major Op.10 for piano and orchestra
Christian Ihle Hadland (piano),
大象传媒 National Orchestra of Wales,
Thomas S酶nderg氓rd (conductor).

3.35pm
Schumann: Symphony no. 1 in B flat major (Spring)
大象传媒 National Orchestra of Wales,
Thierry Fischer (conductor).

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