Tonight’s programme features April Fredrick, who is the English Symphony Orchestra s first Affiliate Artist, to perform Dvorák’s Song to the Moon from Rusalka, arranged by Tony Burke.
The Adagio part of Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor K 546 was a late addition to an earlier work, his Fugue in C minor K 426, written for two pianos in 1783. He later revisited the work in 1788 whilst writing his final three symphonies and transcribed the fugue for strings. It’s not clear why he did this but one theory is he wanted to refresh his old counterpoint studies before starting work on the counterpoint section that concludes his final symphony, ‘Jupiter’.
The first performance of Tony Burke’s arrangement of Strauss’s Morgen! was filmed and recorded in 2020 at Wyastone Concert Hall near Monmouth. It was the first time since lockdown that the English Symphony Orchestra had gathered together for a series of innovative recording projects that would later become ESO Digital.
Emily Doolittle’s A Short, Slow Life was written for soprano Suzie LeBlanc and Symphony Nova Scotia, in celebration of poet Elizabeth Bishop’s centenary. Doolittle was attracted to the delicate natural imagery of this poem – in this case textures as much as sounds.
Mozart’s final three symphonies: numbers 39, 40 and 41, are a trilogy of works that stand apart from his own symphonic output and are a regular occurrence in many a concert hall and orchestra’s repertoire. It might be slightly less familiar than the two that followed, however “taken in its entirety, the symphony [no.39] is refreshing to the ear, its pleasure is only intensified by the fact that it is not much performed. Here is a work of inspiration that, due to its rarity, can still surprise and delight” Elizabeth Schwarm Glesner.