Tag: April Fredrick

Beyond the Horizon – Bristol

Our ‘Music for Humans’ Season continues with a programme that explores music’s power to capture and share moments of happiness, acts of love and kindness and feelings of common purpose and security.

At the heart of this programme is Samuel Barber’s masterpiece, ‘Knoxville: Summer of 1915’, his setting of a prose poem by James Agee. Composed by Barber shortly after World War II, Barber’s setting of Agee’s poem presents a child’s view of life and loss in a rural America that seems, on the surface, far removed from the brutality of the two World Wars. But Barber’s post-War perspective brings extra poignance to Agee’s text, putting to the fore not only the beauty of a world and a community in which a child feels safe and loved, but the tragedy of losing that.

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Beyond the Horizon – Malvern

Our ‘Music for Humans’ Season continues with a programme that explores music’s power to capture and share moments of happiness, acts of love and kindness and feelings of common purpose and security.

At the heart of this programme is Samuel Barber’s masterpiece, ‘Knoxville: Summer of 1915’, his setting of a prose poem by James Agee. Composed by Barber shortly after World War II, Barber’s setting of Agee’s poem presents a child’s view of life and loss in a rural America that seems, on the surface, far removed from the brutality of the two World Wars. But Barber’s post-War perspective brings extra poignance to Agee’s text, putting to the fore not only the beauty of a world and a community in which a child feels safe and loved, but the tragedy of losing that.

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April Fredrick at Great Malvern Priory

Tonight’s programme features April Fredrick, who is the ESO’s first Affiliate Artist, to perform Dvořák’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’ Morgen! was filmed and recorded in 2020 at Wyastone Concert Hall near Monmouth. It was the first time since lockdown that the ESO had gathered together for a series of innovative recording projects that would later become ESO Digital.

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.

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Bluebeard’s Castle

The ESO complete their first year of Music from Wyastone virtual concerts with a concert performance of Bartók’s one-act opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, written in 1911.

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Inspired by Mahler

Despite being, as he described himself, “thrice homeless,” Gustav Mahler rose from humble origins to become the most powerful and celebrated conductor of his time, and one of the greatest composers of all time. By the time of his tragically early death in 1911, he had become an inspirational beacon for a new generation of outsider composers and performers. These composers would re-shape the world of music in the years after World War I

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