Janacek's Taras Bulba

Live from the Royal Festival Hall, the London Philharmonic Orchestra present four composers, each with a thousand tales to tell.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra's Principal Conductor shares his passion for music from Central Europe in the first of two 'Phoenix Lands' concerts. Their programme opens with an overture by Grażyna Bacewicz, written during the German occupation of Warsaw and premiered four months after the German surrender as part of the Krakow Festival of Contemporary Music. That's followed by the violin concerto Bohuslav Martinů wrote whilst in exile in the USA and premiered in 1946 by the Ukrainian-born American violinist Mischa Elman. He was famed for his lyrical tone, and tonight it falls to the young Czech violinist Josef Špaček to step into his shoes. After the interval comes a late masterpiece by Witold Lutosławski, premiered in Los Angeles as recently as 1993. And the concert ends with Janáček's Taras Bulba, an orchestral rhapsody which retells Nikolai Gogol's tale of the death of the Cossack military leader Taras Bulba. Janácek wrote this suite between 1915-1918, and dedicated the work to 'our army... the armed protector of our nation'.

Presented live by Ian Skelly from London's Royal Festival Hall.

Bacewicz: Overture for orchestra
Martinů: Concerto no. 2 for violin and orchestra
Josef Špaček (violin)

Interval

Lutosławski: Symphony no. 4
Janáček: Taras Bulba - rhapsody for orchestra

Josef Špaček (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner (conductor)

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