A new musical setting of Hans Christian Andersen’s masterpiece by Kenneth Woods is narrated by Hugh Bonneville, star of Downton Abbey, the Paddington films and W1A. Beautiful and evocative illustrations by Polish-American artist and musician, Wanda Sobieska, brings an additional level of emotion to this poignant melding of music, word and image.
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Tchaikovsky was a composer with a pragmatic outlook to arrangements . Tchaikovsky composed relatively little chamber music, but his First String Quartet yielded a huge hit, the Andante Cantabile, based on a folk song Tchaikovsky had heard while visiting his sister. Tchaikovsky quickly saw the commercial potential of this movement as a stand-alone item when Leo Tolstoy burst into tears at the work’s première: “Probably never in my life have I been so moved by the pride of authorship as when Lev Tolstoy, sitting by me and listening to the Andante of my Quartet, burst into tears.”
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Recorded live at the 2021 Elgar Festival in Worcester Cathedral with special thanks to the Elgar Society for their sponsorship of the recording and videography of this concert.
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Adrian Williams’ symphony began its life during the spring of 2018 following a request from Kenneth Woods for a work for the English Symphony Orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project.
Read More Philip Sawyers, the ESO’s Composer Laureate, was the first composer to feature in the orchestra’s acclaimed 21st Century Symphony Project. Written in 2020, Remembrance for Strings is a touching meditation on loss, based on themes from Sawyers’ tone poem based on the paintings of Samuel Palmer, The Valley of Vision.
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