Orchestra or Band | City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra |
Set List | 'Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture', Glinka, 'Calculus of the Nervous System', Emily Howard INTERVAL 'Symphony No.7 in C Major 'Leningrad' ', Shostakovich |
Performance Notes | Tonights curtain-raiser is a scintillating overture which kick-started a new era in Russian music. In Calculus of the Nervous System, which has already taken Vienna by storm, Emily Howard draws upon her interest in the inner world of Ada Lovelace, pioneering mathematician daughter of Lord Byron, considered a prophet of the computer age.
Shostakovich completed his titanic Seventh Symphony as German armies advanced deep into the motherland. More recently it has also been seen as one of his exercises in tactful subversion, depicting a Leningrad whose intellectual life Stalin had already shattered.
UK premiere of Emily Howard's, 'Calculus of the Nervous System'. |
Related Archival Material | Proms Guide (RAHE/1/2012/58), Programme (RAHE/1/2012/109), Handbill (RAHE/6/2012/39), Poster (RAHE/2/2012/24) |