The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Philharmonic start the new year on a hopeful note, with a poignant lost-and-found story involving one of Igor Stravinsky’s most personal works. The Russian composer wrote his contemplative Funeral Song in 1908in memory of his friend, mentor and teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. After its premiere, the score for Funeral Song went missing and for over a century it was presumed lost or destroyed. In 2015, a librarian at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory unearthed it while sifting through previously inaccessible papers during preparations for a renovation of the 120-year-old building.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s lush and lively Ballade probably wouldn’t exist at all if not for Edward Elgar’s generous advocacy for the young composer. In 1898, Elgar was offered a commission from Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester but he passed the opportunity to Coleridge-Taylor, then a recent graduate of the Royal College of Music. In recommending him for the work, Elgar described Coleridge-Taylor as ‘far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men’.
Before that, Johan Svendsen takes us to Paris, a city he loved, with a colourful work which he completed following two inspiring years in the French capital. "Rhythms and harmonies are vying with an instrumentation that is not only masterful, but entirely new." So said Svendsen’s good friend Edvard Grieg of Carnival in Paris, just as the piece premiered in 1872. Grieg’s endorsement is not mere flattery, however, but reflects the regard in which Svendsen was widely held by critics and audiences alike.
To finish, we fast-forward to 2016, and Anna Clyne’s elegant response to five recent art works. Abstractions captures the ‘feeling or imagery’ that the works evoked for Clyne, and over five pieces, we are offered a glimpse at the English composer’s rich inner world via her dexterous orchestration.
