Guildhall Chamber Orchestra

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First broadcast: Friday 23 October, 7.30pm

Guildhall Chamber Orchestra
Joshua Weilerstein conductor

Soloists for Pulcinella
Laura Fleur soprano
Innocent Masuku tenor
Jack Holton baritone

Caroline Shaw Entr’acte (arr. for string orchestra)
Prokofiev Symphony No 1, ‘Classical’
Stravinsky Pulcinella

Guildhall Chamber Orchestra welcomes sought-after conductor Joshua Weilerstein, Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, to direct a concert of neoclassical works.

Witnessing a Brentano String Quartet performance of Haydn’s Quartet op 77 inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw to write Entr’acte in 2011. Subtitled ‘a minuet and trio’, the piece fascinatingly weaves eighteenth-century style with 21st-century colours and techniques.

Prokofiev’s self-named “symphony in the Classical style” has become one of the Russian composer’s most popular works. Also modelled in the style of Haydn – with typically Classical orchestral textures and symphonic form – this witty and elegant work is, like the opening piece in this concert, full of harmonic twists which remind the listener of its true century of creation.

The evening ends with a complete performance of Pulcinella: a one-act ballet by Prokofiev’s compatriot Igor Stravinsky, premiered exactly 100 years ago by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The creation of this charming, delicate music – based closely on the manuscripts of Pergolesi among other Baroque and Classical composers – was a labour of love by Stravinsky, who said that "Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible."

The broadcast will begin with pre-concert talk in which conductor Joshua Weilerstein talks about the music, his inspirations, what it's been like to work with the Guildhall Chamber Orchestra and his advice for budding musicians.