RYAN BANCROFT conducts
PAUL LEWIS piano
COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Solemn Prelude
GRIEG Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra
SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2 in D major
A lost work by Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, just recently discovered last year by the Three Choir Festival in Worcester, opens our concert. A stunning piece that has had to wait 120 years for its revival, this romantic work contains contrasting moments of both solemn and passionate melodies.
Internationally regarded pianist, Paul Lewis then solos in Grieg’s only piano concerto, a masterpiece and one of the most-popular and most-recognizable piano concertos ever written. It gleams with lyricism and rhythmic jauntiness highlighting Lewis’s impressive virtuosity.
The concert closes as we embark on an epic journey replete with arching melodies and majestic lines in Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2, arguably his most famous work and a source of inspiration and pride for the Finnish people.
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