大象传媒

The 大象传媒 Philharmonic and Chief Guest Conductor John Storgards in picture-inspired music from America. They are joined by pianist Peter Donohoe for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

From the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Presented by Tom Redmond

Schuller: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
Ives: Central Park in the Dark
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue

8.20
Music Interval

8.40
George Walker: Lilacs
Antheil: Symphony No 6 (After Delacroix)

Peter Donohoe (piano)
Joshua Ellicott (tenor)
大象传媒 Philharmonic
John Storgards (conductor)

An all-American programme inspired by the visual arts begins with Schuller's Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, a piece which he intended as a "retranslation into musical terms of the 'musical' elements" in the pictures. Ives described his Central Park in the Dark as "a picture in sound" of Central Park, although he was depicting the years before the motor car was invented and the sounds of nature take centrestage. Gershwin's viewing of Whistler's 'Nocturne in Blue and Green', an impression of the Thames in London inspired the title of his iconic 'Rhapsody in Blue' for which pianist Peter Donohoe joins the orchestra. After the interval a UK premiere; tenor Joshua Ellicott sings George Walker's magical song-cycle 'Lilacs', the piece with which he was the first African American composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music; a work inspired by another extra-musical source, the words of American poet, Walt Whitman. Self-styled American "bad-boy of music" George Antheil uses the Battle Cry of Freedom as his theme for the piece that ends our concert, his Sixth Symphony which draws inspiration from French artist Delacroix's moody and powerful painting 'Liberty Leading the People'.