Tickets are available:
Click here for the Lighthouse Box office
Click here for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Box Office
Note that the two box offices have different seat selections available.
The Bournemouth Symphony Chorus received a Best Choral Performance Grammy award for our recording of Belshazzar's Feast:
Neville Creed & David Hill, chorus masters; Andrew Litton, conductor
(Bournemouth Symphony Chorus; Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra) . Recorded
in Winchester Cathedral 3-5 February 1995.
Programme:
Bernstein West Side Story: Symphonic Dances
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue
Walton Belshazzar’s Feast
David Hill
Conductor
Steven Osborne
Piano
Andrew Hamilton
Baritone
Bournemouth Symphony Chorus
In 1929 the BBC asked Walton to write an oratorio for small chorus, small orchestra and a vocal soloist. The result was anything but small! Belshazzar’s Feast, to a libretto by Osbert Sitwell, turned out to be on an epic scale. It rejuvenated English oratorio writing, and audiences were surprised with a jazzy, perhaps slightly racy, shocker. Bernstein revisited the score of his wildy successful musical and extracted nine sections to assemble into what he called the Symphonic Dances. The famous opening confrontation of the Jets and the Sharks is followed by the strains of Somewhere and the lively Latin dances of the Mambo and Cha-cha before the Cool fugue slides into the final, deadly Rumble, before ending on a haunting, unresolved chord. That Rhapsody in Blue became an American legend from its very first performance is down to Gershwin’s genius to tap into the spirit of his country drawing on American popular song and dance, African-American jazz, and the rhythm of the New York streets to create a potent new hybrid for the concert hall.