Live online: English Chamber Orchestra: Teatime Music - The Soldier's Tale

The English Chamber Orchestra presents ‘Teatime Music’ a series of four afternoon tea concerts, streamed straight to your living room. Pour yourself a cuppa, crack open the posh biscuits, and enjoy a smorgasbord of programmes, performed by the world's most recorded chamber orchestra.

Based on the Russian folk tale The Runaway Soldier and the Devil, The Soldier’s Tale tells the story of the soldier Joseph, who on his way home on leave, trades his beloved violin to the Devil in exchange for untold earthly riches, only to find them cold comfort for what he has lost. Can Joseph summon more cunning than the devil to win it back?

Stravinsky’s evocative score, premiered in 1918, and scored for ensemble and narrator, draws on wide influences to portray the twists and turns of fate, from flashes of pomp and triumph, to bleak loneliness, and of course, the diabolical strains of the devil’s music.