Programme
Rudi Stephan – Music for Orchestra (1912)
Edward Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor
Ralph Vaughan Williams – Dona nobis pacem

Performers
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
St Magnus Festival Chorus
Paul Rendall – chorus director
Ben Gernon – conductor
Jamal Aliyev – cello
Mary Bevan – soprano
Neal Davies – bass

This concert looks both back to World War I and beyond into the world of peace. The German composer Rudi Stephan’s works are small in number as he was a casualty of World War I but filled with a turn-of-the-century romantic expressionism and great promise which was brutally cut short. An equally romantic work, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, celebrates the 100th anniversary from its premiere in the post-War era, here performed by the young Turkish cellist whose career has blossomed following a stunning BBC Proms debut in 2017. Vaughan Williams’s call for peace, which precedes the Second World War, brings the St Magnus Festival Chorus to the fore in settings of the Latin Mass text alongside words by Walt Whitman and some from political speeches. The chorus is joined by one of the UK’s finest sopranos, Mary Bevan, and 2018 Ferrier Prize winner Will Thomas.

The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.