Repertoire
Gustav Holst: Second Suite in F for Military Band (1911) 11′
Percy Aldridge Grainger: Molly on the Shore (1907/1920) 4′
Robert Russell Bennett: Symphonic Songs for Band (1957) 14′
John Barnes Chance: Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1965) 7′
Vicent Egea: Variacions “Agur Jaunak” (2007) 12′
Franco Cesarini: Old Russian Romances (2012) 13′
Artists
Barcelona Symphony Band
José Rafael Pascual-Vilaplana, conductor
Program
Popular songs and dances from around the world are a marvellous musical heritage. The melodic and rhythmic characteristics of one’s own culture or the exoticism of a foreign one have caught the ear of many a composer. This concert is an invitation to journey through these repertoires and to enjoy symphonic instrumentation that makes them shine.
DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAM HEREHolst offers us seven English melodies in Second Suite in F for Military Band. Grainger provides two Irish dances in the famous Molly on the Shore score, and Bennett, the great orchestrator of hit Broadway musicals, makes us shiver with a peasant festival at the finale of Symphonic Song for Band. Tradition leads us to Korea to hear the song Arirang and the variations composed by Chance, and to the Basque Country with the Agur Jaunak variations by Egea. The last work is Cesarini’s vision of popular Russia, so distant and at the same time so familiar after centuries of cultural exchange between old Europe’s one end and the other.
