Musical Reflections

Berlioz’s Overture opens the concert with a merry excursion through the composer’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, before Pablo Ferrández performs Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No.1. The whirring machinery of the first movement unwinds into a more muted and sombre reflection in the second and third movements, before both soloist and the Orchestra re-energise themselves with an electrifying vigour in the finale.

An evocative and dynamic series of images that forms Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition concludes the evening, a deep retrospective that commemorates the artworks of a lost friend with intensity and sensitivity.