Saturday 2 March 2024

7.30pm

St George's Bristol

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with Gareth Brynmor John baritone

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Wagner Lohengrin: Prelude to Act 1
Pickard Binyon Songs (Orchestral version)
Beethoven Symphony No 6 in F major “Pastoral”, Op 68

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Join conductor Robert Weaver and the Bristol Symphony Orchestra as they mark the 60th birthday of Bristol-based composer John Pickard, whose orchestral and chamber works feature regularly on concert programmes in Britain and around the world, including the BBC Proms.

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Baritone and Kathleen Ferrier Award-winner, Gareth Brynmor John, joins the orchestra to perform Pickard’s Binyon Songs, a song cycle based on a set of poems by Laurence Binyon which explore Nature: its indifference to human aspirations and desires, and its renewing power in the context of a corrupted and ever-changing world. This is a unique opportunity to hear the first live performance of the song cycle, which will be introduced by the composer himself. The evening opens with Wagner’s atmospheric Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin, a musical depiction of a vision of the Holy Grail descending to earth, and culminates in Beethoven’s symphonic visit to the Austrian countryside: in his own words, a ‘ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks,’ that includes storms, partying, feasting and dancing.

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Book tickets here: St George's Bristol

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