Guildhall Chamber Orchestra

Visit this page at the date and time below to enjoy this free online broadcast

Friday 23 October, 7.30pm

Guildhall Chamber Orchestra
Joshua Weilerstein conductor

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 neo-Classical 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 music from the ballet Pulcinella – a masterpiece of Neo-Classicism 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.