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In their spectacular season opener Kirill Karabits conducts the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in music by three composers who served as Kappelmeisters in Weimar, hub of German humanism in the 18th and 19th centuries and home to Friedrich Schiller: literary giant, political philosopher, champion of German unity and author of the Ode to Joy.

In 1859, Franz Liszt's contributions to Weimar's Schiller centenary celebrations included his collaboration with playwright Friedrich Halm. The resulting melodrama for actors and orchestra Vor hundert Jahren (A Hundred Years Ago), portrays an unhappy personified Germany comforted by Poesie's tour of Schiller's work with its promising hope for the nation's future. Tonight is a rare chance to hear Liszt's intriguing unpublished score, set to a new dramatisation by Gerard McBurney, and with a cast led by Sara Kestelman and Jemma Redgrave. It's prefaced with another Liszt rarity, Kunstlerfestzug, Processions of the Artists, an orchestral march for the Schiller shindig.

Bookending the concert are Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Freudenfest Overture, celebrating Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo (and including a rousing surge of God Save the King), and Richard Strauss's ever-popular suite from his opera Der Rosenkavalier.

Presented by Martin Handley, live from the Lighthouse in Poole.

Hummel: Freudenfest Overture
Liszt: Kunstlerfestzug
Liszt: Vor hundert Jahren

Interval Music (from CD)
August Muller: Grande Sonata in C, Op 38
Francesca Pagnini, flute
Paolo Bidoli, piano

Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier Suite

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Kirill Karabits (conductor)

Cast for Vor hundert Jahren
Germania....... Sara Kestelman
Poesie……. Jemma Redgrave
Clotho……. Ruby Russell
Lachesis……. Laura McKay
Atropos……. Jordan Finding

Image c/o Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (credit: Nick Cary)