BBC Philharmonic: Anna Clyne | Mozart | Mahler at The Bridgewater Hall
Will Fulford-Jones
Tonight’s concert, like many others in the BBC Philharmonic’s ongoing season, begins with a first. Born in London and resident in Brooklyn, Anna Clyne began her career as an electronic music specialist, but the inventive young composer now works across a bewildering variety of fields and media. Inspired by poetry from Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire, This Midnight Hour is an intensely atmospheric nocturnal miniature that receives its first ever UK performance this evening. There’s another first to close the concert: Gustav Mahler’s sprawling debut symphony, completed when the composer was 27 and alive with the possibilities of youth. The unlikely trio of works is completed by Mozart’s impassioned D minor Piano Concerto, performed by American Mozart specialist Richard Goode. Also worth noting: this is Ben Gernon’s first Bridgewater Hall concert as the BBC Philharmonic’s Principal Guest Conductor. If this strikingly varied programme is any guide, the 28-year-old should be well worth watching, both tonight and in the future.
Ben Gernon – Conductor
Richard Goode – Piano
