Royal Northern Sinfonia playing Britten, Bach and Mendelssohn - 6.10.17

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

7.30 p.m.
Sage, Gateshead

Britten's Op.1 was written whilst a composition student of John Ireland at the Royal College of Music. It's an astonishingly assured debut for an 18 year old: in spite the hostility of the College to the radicalism of the Second Viennese School - Britten was prevented from studying with Berg in 1934 - the influence of Schoenberg is clear. In contrast, Mendelssohn's youthful Symphony No 1 looks back - Mozart a huge influence on the then-15 year old. And further, to the contrapuntalism of JS Bach, whose Concerto for 2 Violins - fittingly written for two principle orchestral violinists - also bridges the centuries as the basis of Vaughan Williams' relatively neglected Violin Concerto. And in between, a contribution to the nascent Sinfonia genre by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, eldest (and reputedly both favourite and most talented) child of dad Johann Sebastian.

Britten: Sinfonietta, Op.1
Vaughan Williams: Violin Concerto in D minor (Accademico)
JS Bach: Double Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043
WF Bach: Sinfonia in D minor
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op 11

Royal Northern Sinfonia
Kyra Humphreys (violin)
Bradley Creswick (violin/director).

[Serial_Apologist]

7.30 p.m.
Sage, Gateshead

Britten's Op.1 was written whilst a composition student of John Ireland at the Royal College of Music. It's an astonishingly assured debut for an 18 year old: in spite the hostility of the College to the radicalism of the Second Viennese School - Britten was prevented from studying with Berg in 1934 - the influence of Schoenberg is clear. In contrast, Mendelssohn's youthful Symphony No 1 looks back - Mozart a huge influence on the then-15 year old. And further, to the contrapuntalism of JS Bach, whose Concerto for 2 Violins - fittingly written for two principle orchestral violinists - also bridges the centuries as the basis of Vaughan Williams' relatively neglected Violin Concerto. And in between, a contribution to the nascent Sinfonia genre by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, eldest (and reputedly both favourite and most talented) child of dad Johann Sebastian.

Britten: Sinfonietta, Op.1
Vaughan Williams: Violin Concerto in D minor (Accademico)
JS Bach: Double Violin Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043
WF Bach: Sinfonia in D minor
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op 11

Royal Northern Sinfonia
Kyra Humphreys (violin)
Bradley Creswick (violin/director).

I've heard this Schoenberg influence alleged before. Well, from memory of hearing the piece, admittedly, I can't hear much of it in the Britten Op 1. For one thing alone, the pandiatonic-dominated harmonic idiom was quite other from AS's chromatically extended tonalities, and much closer to the fashionable neo-classicism of the time.

Should this be two threads, btw?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

... by Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, eldest (and reputedly both favourite and most talented) child of dad Johann Sebastian.

Favouritism can never be justified.