Birtwistle Earth Dances

Barbican Hall, London
Barbican, Silk Street, London EC2
United Kingdom
020 7638 8891
http://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins conductor
Elizabeth Watts soprano
Marcus Farnsworth baritone


Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s large-scale orchestral work from 1986 explores the element of Earth with a primordial power and colossal ambition: it’s one of his greatest scores and impresses with its strength and ambition 30 years on. Martyn Brabbins, a master of music like this, then turns his attention to the element of Water – Ralph Vaughan Williams’s choral A Sea Symphony, one of the most confident first symphonies ever, first heard in 1910, with its two singers lifting the poetry of Walt Whitman into song. Two superb singers of the younger generation – Elizabeth Watts and Marcus Farnsworth – and the BBC Symphony Chorus join the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a programme that exults in the power of nature.



Harrison Birtwistle : Earth dances
Vaughan Williams : Symphony No 1, A Sea Symphony