The Hallé – Roderick Williams sings Butterworth
Johnny James, Managing Editor
BENJAMIN BRITTEN Russian Funeral
ARVO PÄRT Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten
GEORGE BUTTERWORTH Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad orch. Roderick Williams (World Premiere)
RICHARD STRAUSS Metamorphosen
Sir Mark Elder CONDUCTOR
Roderick Williams BARITONE
The second concert in the Hallé’s Winter Season features a programme of works that reflect on the poignancy and fragility of human life.
It begins with Benjamin Britten’s Russian Funeral for brass and percussion, followed by Arvo Pärt’s memorial ode to Britten himself – an elegiac masterwork of disarming simplicity.
Roderick Williams (named ‘our greatest baritone’ by The Daily Telegraph) sings George Butterworth’s Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, in the world premiere of his new orchestration of these bitter-sweet settings which searingly penetrate to the heart of Housman’s poems.
Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings is a huge favourite of Sir Mark’s, who wanted to perform it again with a new generation of Hallé strings. He feels it is ‘one of Strauss’s most deeply felt works’, the composer’s reflection on the destruction of Germany, its people and culture following the tyranny of Nazism.
Streaming from Hallé St Peter’s, the concert will be available to view on Vimeo at thehalle.vhx.tv, and tickets can be purchased via the orchestra’s website.
