Final Years

In his final years, Gounod turned away from the stage to focus once again on religious music. After the huge success of his oratorio Rédemption at the Birmingham Festival, he was invited to conduct the premiere of another a few years later. The work proved to be equally popular but had to be performed in his absence. Georgina Weldon, who had been his friend and nurse a decade earlier, had turned vindictive foe and threatened to have him arrested should he ever set foot on English soil again. Donald Macleod introduces part of that enormous work, plus two of Gounod's chamber works: the Petite Symphonie for nine wind instruments and the only string quartet of his ever to be published.