Saint-Saens’s Organ Symphony in Nottingham

Mark Forrest showcases the best performances by BBC orchestras, choirs, ensembles and other great performing groups from Europe and around the globe.

The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra is our ensemble in focus this week, and today we hear them in music by Haydn and Saint-Saens. The programme opens with Haydn’s ‘Miracle’ Symphony from a performance given in Malvern, and later in the programme organist Jonathan Scott joins them on the organ of the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham for Saint-Saens’s spectacular Symphony No. 3, known – for obvious reasons – as the Organ Symphony.

Throughout the week we’re hearing from music written by Robert Schumann in 1842, his ‘year of chamber music’. Today, former Radio 3 New Generation Artists the Consone Quartet play Schumann’s String Quartet No. 2 at a concert given in Birmingham.

We make our first visit this week to the Glenarm Festival of Voice in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, to hear Radio 3 New Generation Artist James Atkinson singing Gerald Finzi’s exquisite song-cycle Earth and Air and Rain.

And there’s more from the BBC Concert Orchestra’s recent concert in Brno, a musical tribute to the great conductor and champion of Czech music, Charles Mackerras.

1pm
Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 96 in D major, ‘Miracle’
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Andrew Manze (conductor)

Robert Schumann
String Quartet No. 2 in F major, Op. 41 No. 2
Consone Quartet

Camille Saint-Saens
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, ‘Organ’
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Jonathan Scott (organ)
John Storgards (conductor)

Gerald Finzi
Earth and Air and Rain, Op. 15
James Atkinson (baritone)
Simon Lepper (piano)

Doreen Carwithen
Men of Sherwood Forest - Overture
BBC Concert Orchestra
Anna-Maria Helsing (conductor)

To listen to this programme (using most smart speakers) just say 'Ask BBC Sounds to play Classical Live'.