Elgar Cello Concerto and Stravinsky Firebird

The BBC Philharmonic is joined by Chief Conductor John Storgårds for music from the early twentieth century.

A Russian fairy tale is the starting point for Stravinsky's The Firebird, written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. The Firebird's magic feathers offer protection to Prince Ivan and help to conquer the evil sorcerer Kashchei in this colourful score. Stravinsky left Russia at the start of the First World War, and the October Revolution in 1917 left him unable to return to his homeland. After living in Europe, he moved to America, in 1945 becoming a US citizen and creating this Suite from the ballet.

For the tenth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, the 21 year old Shostakovich was commissioned to write a piece by the Propaganda Department; he responded with his Second Symphony, his shortest. A factory siren highlights Communist industrial ideology and the chorus shouts 'Lenin'.

We open with Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad Rhapsody. Written in 1913 it takes as its inspiration songs which Butterworth had written to poems from Housman's 'A Shropshire Lad'. The poems explore lost youth and became companions to soldiers serving in the Boer and First World Wars. Butterworth's music is imbued with poignancy; he was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Senja Rummukainen joins the orchestra for Elgar's Cello Concerto, a lament written in the aftermath of the First World War, for things lost, and a very personal search for a way forward.

Butterworth: A Shropshire Lad 'Rhapsody'
Elgar: Cello Concerto

8.15
Music Interval

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2 (To October)
Stravinsky: The Firebird, Suite (1945)

Senja Rummukainen (cello)
CBSO Chorus
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
John Storgårds (conductor)

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