American Night | Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra

Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra opens its new season with a concert of music from across the pond!

It’s a night of tune after tune after tune, that opens with Copland’s breath-taking Fanfare for the Common Man and Bernstein’s popular Candide Overture.

There’s also the sheer brilliance of music by George Gershwin in a suite from his opera Porgy and Bess….Summertime, Bess You is My Woman Now and It Ain’t Necessarily So, just some of the hit songs included. Jeff Howard, one of our favourite soloists features in Rhapsody in Blue, a work that epitomises the energy and razzmatazz of 1920s New York.

Charles Ives completed his Symphony No. 2 in 1901, but it wasn’t performed for 50 years in a now legendary premiere conducted by Leonard Bernstein. Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Michael Bell was bowled over by this piece at the BBC Proms in 2018 and knew it was a work Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra had to perform. It begins lyrically, like Dvorak or Brahms, and closes in the most infectiously brilliant and joyous last movement with quotes of marches, hymns and American folk songs and an ending that will be as unexpected as it is stunning! A belated Welsh premiere!

Also featured is Barber’s deeply felt Adagio for Strings widely known for its use on the soundtrack of films The Elephant Man and Platoon.