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An evening of music and readings that provides space for reflection while reminding us that mankind’s capacity for creating art of extraordinary beauty endures even the darkest of times.
Reading: Rainer Maria Rilke Extracts from First Elegy from Duino Elegies
George Butterworth Two English Idylls and The Banks of Green Willow
Reading: Laurence Binyon For the Fallen
Richard Strauss Horn Concerto No. 1
Interval (15 mins)
Reading Emily Dickinson The World is not Conclusion
Esa-Pekka Salonen Concert étude
Reading: Christopher Okigbo Come Thunder
Dmitri Shostakovich Chamber Symphony in C minor
Reading: Sir Ben Okri Extracts from From Mental Fight
Tess Jackson conductor
Ben Goldscheider horn
with poetry read by Sir Ben Okri
Tonight’s concert features music and poetry, and prose that highlight different ways war affects art: the loss of art from lives cut short, the art that survives through dark times, and art created as an outlet for the anger caused by suffering and persecution.
Sir Ben Okri reads poetry, chosen by him, that shows the profound effect that wars have on writers; from Rainer Maria Rilke who was so deeply affected by the horrors of WWI that he was unable to write through to Christopher Okigbo, who lost his life fighting in the Biafran War.
Music includes orchestal works by George Butterworth, a composer whose folk-tune filled music has come to symbolise the sacrifice made by his generation and who himself was killed fighting in the Battle of the Somme. Ben Goldscheider is the soloist for Strauss’s Horn Concerto No 1 is a wonderfully melodic and virtuosic showcase for the horn with fanfares, hunting calls and a poignantly lyrical, contemplative second movement and Shostakovich’s spirited symphony for strings is dedicated to ‘the victims of fascism and war’.
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