Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Domingo Hindoyan conductor
Guy Johnston cello
 
Roberto Sierra Fandangos
Elgar Cello Concerto
Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances

From Dublin’s twin city comes the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic with its Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan and exceptional cellist Guy Johnston for Elgar’s bleak but beautiful Cello Concerto, an emotion-filled high-watermark of modern English music.

Dance dominates Roberto Sierra’s Fandangos in a set of vibrant orchestral variations with distinctive Spanish trumpets and castanets to the fore. Quoting from several of his major works, Rachmaninov’s leave-taking Symphonic Dances wrestles with death in music put through the emotional wringer.   

Did you know?

Roberto Sierra was born in Puerto Rico and studied in Europe with György Ligeti.

Elgar was a keen amateur chemist, credited with inventing the Elgar Sulphuretted Hydrogen Apparatus, a device to synthesise hydrogen sulphide.

Composed in 1919 and now considered a masterpiece, his Cello Concerto was all but ignored until Jacqueline Du Pré recorded it in 1965.

The Symphonic Dances is the only piece Rachmaninov completed in America and notable for its use of an alto saxophone as a solo instrument.

Listen out for…

The cello’s plangent soliloquy at the start of Elgar’s concerto and the elegiac and flowing theme from violas that creates the work’s pastoral mood.

The passionate Adagio where orchestral voices are held back to foreground the cello at its most intense and confessional.

The encroaching shadows falling across the finale until the cello repeats its very first phrase to end the concerto on a note of optimism.

The warming alto saxophone solo in Rachmaninov’s opening ‘Noon’ movement.

The sinister blasts of brass that interrupt the broken waltz rhythm in the ‘Twilight’ middle movement.

The echoes of liturgical music that add colour to the sweeping symphonic swagger of the concluding ‘Midnight’.

Presented by NCH