Friday 15 May 2009 at 7.30 p.m.
Mozart - Overture 'Marriage of Figaro' *
Beethoven - Symphony No. 8 *
William Attwood - new work (for double bass and orchestra)
Beethoven - Symphony No. 4
Anthony Williams - double bass
Samuel Burstin - conductor *
Andrew Morley - conductor
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Our penultimate concert of the season welcomes back Sam Burstin, who has conducted St Paul's in the last two seasons to great acclaim. His first half of the concert includes Mozart's breakneck 'Marriage of Figaro' overture, setting the pace nicely for Beethoven's quirky (and often undervalued, flanked as it is by the warhorses of the seventh and ninth symphonies) Symphony No. 8.
In the second half, Andrew Morley joins the orchestra for the final piece by our Composer in Residence, William Attwood. Our major commission this year is a brand-new concerto for our principal double bass, Anthony Williams. Double bass concertos are few and far between, and are often only pieces written by double bass virtuosi frustrated at the lack of works that truly exploit the instrument's amazing range and variety of tone. This concerto promises to be very different from the norm!
William Attwood has written about this forthcoming concerto:
There are few such works... How exciting! What a challenge! Exciting to suddenly cast an instrument like double bass into the soloist's spotlight. A challenge because the soloist-ensemble relationship is to a large extent turned on its head. It certainly won't be a run-of-the mill piece !
My first thoughts are of a kind of musical drama with soloist and orchestra cast in different roles. The power and gravity of the double bass sound could be set against high strings and winds with their potential for fleeting textures, and declamatory bass notes could be answered with chords and gestures in other registers.
Now it seems that this basic structure could be further embellished and strengthened with more transitory groupings of “soloists” and “orchestras”, which come and go in different formations. They could corrupt the initial premise, contribute to it, change it or leave it unaltered... This is the point where a plan starts to become a piece and the way these things pan out is what makes every new work a discovery.
If this intriguing description whets your appetite for more, come along and hear it for yourself!
Lastly, another of Beethoven's less-often-heard symphonies. It is a pity that the fourth symphony is preceded by the Eroica and succeeded by the fifth symphony, because it is an amazing piece that is heard far too infrequently, with a finger-twisting last movement as difficult as anything Beethoven ever wrote!
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Tickets £10/£8 - available on the door before each concert
