Three magnificent, emotional works that sink into shadow and burst into sunlight: Lili Boulanger’s gorgeous depiction of a Spring morning, D’un matin de printemps, Dvořák’s keening Cello Concerto, and the pastoral warmth of Brahms’ hymn to nature, his Second Symphony.
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is a musical conjuring trick that transforms a concerto into exquisite chamber music. Composed in New York, and arguably the most popular work ever written for the instrument, it is tinged with homesickness for his native Bohemia and sorrow at the death of his first love.
Cellist Pablo Ferrández, whose ‘pop-idol magnetism, superb technique and exhilarating musicality reveal a sure star in the making’ (Los Angeles Times), joins the National Symphony Orchestra for a moving masterpiece that carries itself, the composer said, ‘like a sigh’.
Sharing its genial, bucolic mood with Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, Brahms’ smiling Second Symphony is often referred to as his Pastoral. The most relaxed and convivial of his four symphonies, even so, troubling shadows and dark, dislocating undercurrents flit through its sunny disposition
Simmering energy quickly bursts free into jubilant vibrancy, vim and verve to create music that, for all its fleeting doubts, has an exhilarating vigour and unabashed joyfulness perfect for the bright promises of Spring.
Presented by National Symphony Orchestra