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Radio 3 in Concert

Music: Classical

The best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Experience the best concerts from across the UK and Europe. Available to listen online for 30 days

Radio 3 in Concert: BBC NOW: World premiere of Stanford Mass

BBC NOW: World premiere of Stanford Mass

BBC Radio 3 - Radio 3 in Concert, BBC NOW: World premiere of Stanford Mass

BBC NOW and NCW perform the world premiere of Stanford's Mass Via Victrix

Adrian Partington and the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales in a concert marking the centenary of WW1, including the long-awaited premiere of Stanford's Mass Via Victrix.

From BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Presented by Nicola Heywood Thomas

Adrian Partington and the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales perform a concert marking the centenary of WWI, concluding with the long awaited premiere of Stanford's Mass Via Victrix.

7.30
Farrar: Rhapsody No 1 - The Open Road, Op 9
Kelly: Elegy for strings, In Memoriam Rupert Brooke
Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin

8.20 Interval

Stanford: Mass Via Victrix (1914-1918)

Kiandra Howarth (soprano)
Jess Dandy (contralto)
Ruairi Bowen (tenor)
Gareth Brynmor John (baritone)
BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales
Adrian Partington (conductor)

To commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales present a concert of music for the fallen souls from the war, concluding with the premiere of Stanford's Mass Via Victrix (1914-1918), 99 years after its composition.  The Orchestra begins by commemorating a little-known composer who fell in the war, Ernest Farrar, with his orchestral Rhapsody The Open Road, written in 1909 and loosely based on Walt Whitman's poem Song for the Open Road.  Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy for strings, in memoriam Rupert Brooke was written while the composer was recuperating from the Battle of Gallipoli and is dedicated to the poet Rupert Brooke, whose midnight burial on the Isle of Skyros is one of the more well-known episodes from the early part of the war. Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin completes the concert's first part, a piece whose movements are each dedicated to a different friend who died fighting in the war.

Stanford's Mass Via Victrix (1914-1918) encapsulates both a sense of relief and celebration for the allied victory, but also a deep sense of mourning for the tragic loss of those who fell.  Although it was completed in December 1919 the work has never been performed in full, and the full manuscript score has been painstakingly transcribed  into performing parts by Stanford scholar Jeremy Dibble. During the interval Jeremy will talk about the challenges involved in that undertaking.

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