大象传媒

Live from City Halls, Glasgow

Presented by Jamie MacDougall

The 大象传媒 Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Donald Runnicles perform Mussorgsky and Shostakovich, and are joined by Barry Douglas for Scriabin's Piano Concerto.

Mussorgsky: A Night on the Bare Mountain
Scriabin: Piano Concerto

8.10 Interval
More from tonight's soloist Barry Douglas including some recent recordings

8.40
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10

Barry Douglas (Piano)
大象传媒 Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Donald Runnicles (Conductor)

As the 大象传媒 Scottish Symphony Orchestra launch their 2014/15 Glasgow concert season, they take to the stage with Chief Conductor Donald Runnicles and a programme of music from three Russian visionaries.
Mussorgsky's A Night on the Bare Mountain creates a vivid and occasionally unsettling musical picture, demonstrating all of that composer's verve and boldly inventive orchestration. Scriabin, like Mussorgsky with A Night on the Bare Mountain, wrote his F-sharp minor Piano Concerto as a young man. And it flows with youthful charm and romantic melodies. Tonight the 大象传媒 SSO is joined by a renowned interpreter of Russian scores, Barry Douglas.
And the concert concludes with perhaps one of Shostakovich's greatest achievements, his Tenth Symphony. A tour-de-force for orchestra, first performed in Leningrad in 1953, the score seems to comment bitterly on the death on Stalin and the proceeding Stalinist period of artistic control. Reflecting the composer's own struggles it is a symphony which embodies all the ironic contradictions in Shostakovich's music: from dark and gloomy opening figures to an almost obsessively triumphant conclusion.

Following the concert, '大象传媒 Singers at 90': in the week during which the 大象传媒's professional choir celebrates its 90th anniversary, British composers introduce recordings of their music performed by the 大象传媒 Singers.