BBC Symphony Orchestra - Schreker, Nicola Lefanu and Rachmaninov

Live from the Barbican. The BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Ilan Volkov, in Rachmaninov & Schrecker. Soprano Rachel Nicholls joins to premiere Nicola Lefanu's The Crimson Bird.

Presented by Martin Handley

Franz Schreker: Nachtstück - Interlude from Der ferne Klang (Act III)
Nicola Lefanu: The Crimson Bird (World Premiere)

8.00 pm Interval

8.20 pm
Rachmaninov: Symphony No.3

Rachel Nicholls (soprano)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Rachmaninov's final symphony concludes a concert that includes Franz Schreker's interlude from his opera Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) and a brand new work, The Crimson Bird, by Nicola LeFanu.

Nicola LeFanu unveils her new Royal Philharmonic Society commission, a work for soprano and orchestra, with Ilan Volkov, a passionate champion of the new, on the podium. It is a setting of four specially written poems by John Fuller linked to Euripides' play the Trojan Women.

A child of fin-de-siècle Vienna, opera composer Schreker's ravishingly beautiful Nachtstück forms the lush opener. Rachmaninov's last symphony, though written in America, far from the composer's homeland, is deeply entrenched in his Russian heritage. Dark, brooding sonorities give way to a triumphant, celebratory conclusion.