BACHTRACK ★★★★
Elgar’s Froissart Overture was his first score for orchestra, named after Froissart’s chronicles of the middle ages and headed by a line from Keats: “When chivalry lifted up her lance on high”. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra strings launched into its opening with fire and precision, and the faster sections could not have been more chivalric if Tadaaki Otaka had conducted in full armour waving Excalibur.
In June and July 2017, RPO Resound (the Orchestra’s Community and Education Department) and partners Irene Taylor Trust (ITT) are bringing The Lullaby Project – part of Carnegie Hall’s Musical Connections programme – to the UK for the very first time. Based on a model that has achieved success across the United States with a range of partners including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, this UK pilot will work with young refugee and migrant mothers in East London to compose and record personal lullabies for their children.
On Tuesday 27 June a very special artist comes to Cadogan Hall; in Hollywood circles a living legend, a man whose music has been recognised above the work of fellow composer-greats John Williams, Hans Zimmer and Ennio Morricone. In 2000 he walked onto the stage at no less an occasion than the Academy Awards to receive the Oscar for Best Original Score for the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an achievement made doubly significant by the fact that the other film scores shortlisted that year included Gladiator, Chocolat and The Patriot.
CLASSICAL SOURCE
Otaka’s grasp of Elgar is total – which is saying something, for those who remember his fine accounts of the A-flat Symphony in particular – and his direction of Froissart (not one of Elgar’s flawless masterpieces) so captured the essence of this work that its qualities were clearly and cleverly brought out. Indeed, this was a performance of no little stature in which architecture and atmosphere were perfectly equated.
