Sinfonia ViVA

Programme:
Mozart Overture: The Magic Flute
Beethoven Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano
Emilie Mayer Overture in D Minor
Brahms Schicksalslied
Vaughan Williams Toward the Unknown Region

Members of Nottingham’s famous Kanneh-Mason family have appeared several times in previous Nottingham Classics seasons but this performance of Beethoven’s ‘Triple Concerto’ is the first time that three of them will have appeared together on our stage. Written around the time of the Eroica Symphony it’s an adventurous musical hybrid, playfully combining elements of the piano trio with the concerto and presenting the soloists as a collective force against the grandeur of the orchestra.

The rest of the programme is a feast of Germanic and British orchestral and choral music. Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture launches the concert with both the Masonic solemnity and the comedic high spirits of his opera, whilst the pioneering Emilie Mayer’s Overture in D Minor is an example of her taut and dramatic writing at its best. The two choral items form a fascinating contrast: Brahms’s dramatic cantata Schicksalslied (‘Song of Fate’) was inspired by Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem concerning the Greek mythical titan Hyperion, and the contrast it makes between the blissful lives of the Immortals and the restless existence of human beings, buffeted by fate. There’s a more optimistic mood embraced by Vaughan Williams’ Toward the Unknown Region, as you might expect from a work reflecting the composer’s admiration for Walt Whitman’s transcendent poetry. The spirit of adventure reigns throughout, Whitman’s visionary words unleashing wave after wave of musical elation.