ORORCHESTRALCHESTRAL FAVOURITESFAVOURITES WAGNER · DVOŘÁK · RAVEL · SIBELIUS · HANDEL · VERDI TCHAIKOVSKY · GERSHWIN · HOLST · MENDELSSOHN ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Orchestral Favourites 1. HANDEL Zadok the Priest 5’17 12. RAVEL Boléro 14’40 25. R. STRAUSS Also sprach Zarathustra 36. TCHAIKOVSKY The Sleeping Goldsmiths’ Choral Union (Introduction) 1’52 Beauty (Waltz) 4’28 13. SIBELIUS Finlandia 7’58 2. WAGNER Die Walküre 26. SUPPÉ Light Cavalry (Overture) 6’40 37. J. STRAUSS II Pizzicato Polka 2’46 (The Ride of the Valkyries) 5’09 14. ORFF Carmina Burana (O Fortuna) 2’33 27. SOUSA The Stars and Stripes 38. BIZET Carmen (Prélude and 3. VERDI Aida (Grand March) 7’38 Goldsmiths’ Choral Union Forever 3’30 Aragonaise · Les Toréadors) 5’58 Royal Choral Society 15. FAURÉ Pavane 6’28 28. GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue 18’18 39. MENDELSSOHN The Hebrides 4. ELGAR Enigma Variations Lucy Parham piano Overture (Fingal’s Cave) 9’55 (Nimrod) 3’45 16. PARRY Jerusalem 2’50 Goldsmiths’ Choral Union 29. LEHÁR Gold and Silver Waltz 7’14 40. MUSSORGSKY Pictures at an 5. BIZET The Pearl Fishers Exhibition (Duet: Au fond de temple saint) 4’55 17. SOUSA The Liberty Bell March 2’26 30. VERDI Nabucco (The Great Gate of Kiev) 5’34 Wynne Evans tenor (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) 4’15 Donald Maxwell baritone 18. ROSSINI The Barber of Seville 41. PUCCINI Gianni Schicchi (Largo al factotum) 4’51 31. GRIEG Peer Gynt (Morning) 4’09 (O mio babbino caro) 3’00 6. OFFENBACH Orpheus in the Donald Maxwell baritone Deborah Norman soprano 32. SAINT-SAËNS Carnival of the Underworld (Can-Can) 2’12 19. JOHANN STRAUSS II Animals (The Swan) 3’03 42. ROSSINI L’italiana in Algeri 7. DVORˇ ÁK Slavonic Dance No.8 4’29 On the Beautiful Blue Danube 9’52 Tim Gill cello · Roderick Elms piano (Overture) 7’54 8. PUCCINI Turandot 20. HANDEL Messiah (Hallelujah) 4’10 33. VERDI Rigoletto 43. KHACHATURIAN Gayane (Nessun dorma) 2’59 Goldsmiths’ Choral Union (La donna è mobile) 2’10 (Sabre Dance) 2’22 Wynne Evans tenor Wynne Evans tenor 21. ELGAR Pomp and Circumstance 44. BLISS Things to Come (March) 3’51 9. SAINT-SAËNS Danse macabre 7’20 March No.1 5’33 34. HOLST The Planets (Jupiter) 8’26 Michael Davis solo violin 45. BORODIN Prince Igor 22. DI CAPUA O sole mio 2’18 35. WAGNER Die Meistersinger (Polovtsian Dances) 11’07 10. PUCCINI Madama Butterfly Wynne Evans tenor von Nürnberg (Overture) 9’50 Goldmiths’ Choral Union (Un bel dì vedremo) 5’40 Deborah Norman soprano 23. KHACHATURIAN Gayaneh (Sabre Dance) 2’26 11. BARBER Adagio for Strings 7’46 24. TCHAIKOVSKY 1812 Overture 15’56 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Conductors: Philip Ellis (tracks: 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 21–24, 26, 28, 38, 43) Owain Arwel Hughes (tracks: 1, 3, 5, 10, 14, 16, 18, 20, 25, 30, 33, 34, 40, 41, 45) Nick Davies (tracks: 7, 9, 15) John Rigby (tracks: 27, 31, 35, 36, 39, 42) Barry Wordsworth (tracks: 29, 37) Robin Stapleton (track 44) CD1 Act 3 opens with the celebrated Walkürenritt (Ride of the Valkyries), in which the George Frideric Handel 1685–1759 band of warrior maidens sweep across the sky bearing their slain warriors. In the 1. Zadok the Priest HWV258 opera this passage is scored for whooping female voices and orchestra, but translates The coronation of King George II took place at Westminster Abbey on 11 October 1727 effectively as a voiceless concert item. and, to mark the occasion, Handel was commissioned to write four new coronation anthems. Shortly before the coronation, the press advertised the great event – during which Giuseppe Verdi 1813–1901 ‘a Hundred of the Best musicians will perform’ – promising that the music would ‘exceed 3. Aida (Grand March) any Thing heretofore of the same Kind’. Unfortunately, the performances failed to match Aida was written for, and first performed at, the Cairo Opera House in 1871. It tells the the grandeur of the glittering occasion, the Archbishop of Canterbury noting that the choir story of the beautiful young Ethiopian princess Aida who falls in love with an Egyptian was so negligent as to omit one Purcell anthem entirely and to come in too early with enemy soldier, Radamès. In the course of their doomed liaison, Radamès unwittingly Handel’s resplendent Zadok the Priest. As the Archbishop himself succinctly put it, ‘The betrays his own country to the Ethiopians, and both star-crossed lovers ultimately perish anthems in confusion; all irregular in the music’. when they are buried alive in a crypt. Fortunately, Handel’s coronation anthems survived their ineffective first performances All is not bleak despair and thwarted passion in this opera, however, and Aida and Zadok the Priest has become one of his most popular choral works. It has been contains some of Verdi’s most brilliant and colourful music. The famous Grand used at every coronation service since its premiere, including that of the current reigning March (incorporating in the opera a stunning ballet sequence) is played to accompany monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The text (selected from the Book of Kings to reflect the Radamès’s successful return to the city of Memphis with his Ethiopian prisoners-of-war, anointing of the monarch) is set in Handel’s grandest manner, and the magical orchestral surrounded by cheering crowds of Egyptians. prelude with its delayed explosion of choir, trumpets and drums remains one of the most thrilling moments in music. Sir Edward Elger 1857–1934 4. Variations on an original theme, ‘Enigma’ (Nimrod) Richard Wagner 1813–1883 Various solutions have been proposed to solve the mystery of Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations’ 2. Die Walküre (The Ride of the Valkyries) of 1899, none of them absolutely conclusive, though the slow movement of Mozart’s Die Walküre, the second of the four operas that make up Wagner’s operatic tetralogy ‘Prague’ Symphony – which we know Elgar loved to the extent of playing the record on The Ring of the Nibelung, was first performed in Munich in 1870 to an audience that a portable gramophone among the Malvern hills while on bike trips with friends – seems included Brahms, Liszt and Saint-Saëns. The opera takes up the story (begun in Das the most likely. Rheingold) of the magic ring and those who seek to take control of it, and comes to ‘Nimrod’ – the Biblical mighty hunter – translates into German as ‘Jaeger’, identifying focus on the conflict between the god Wotan and his favourite daughter Brünnhilde. this variation as a portrait of Elgar’s dear friend August Jaeger. It is one of Elgar’s most The latter is a member of Wotan’s select band of Valkyries (war maidens), whose task it beautiful tunes, a warmly expressive tribute to a much-loved friend. is to carry to Valhalla the souls of heroes slain in battle. Brünnhilde disobeys Wotan by attempting to change the course of battle, and in so doing is punished by being bound in sleep on a rock surrounded by magic fire. Georges Bizet 1838–1875 Giacomo Puccini 1858–1924 5. Les pêcheurs de perles (Duet: Au fond du temple saint) 8. Turandot (Nessun dorma) Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, in common with many other French operas of the time, suffers In Puccini’s ‘Chinese’ opera, the icy Princess Turandot will marry anyone who can from an absurd and utterly unbelievable storyline. The opera is set in Ceylon and tells answer three riddles, and execute anyone who fails. Calaf succeeds, and to give her a of the love of two men (one of whom is the ‘King’ of the Pearl Fishers) for the beautiful sporting chance says he will renounce his claim on her (and go to his own execution) if priestess Leila. So deep was their love that they vowed to separate for ever, but inevitably she can discover his real name before the following dawn. Confident that she will fail, they all meet again and their rival passions erupt. Improbability piles upon unlikelihood he sings the justly celebrated ‘Nessun dorma’ (‘None shall sleep’), in which he accurately in the twisted storyline, but Bizet’s music manages to transcend the many dramatic predicts a sleepless night for the population of Peking and his own victory at dawn – eccentricities of the narrative. The opera was first produced in Paris in 1863, and 24 allálba vincerò! (‘at dawn I shall win!). years later in London under the title Leila. The celebrated duet ‘Au fond du temple saint’ finds the two men reminiscing about the impact of Leila on their lives. Camille Saint-Saëns 1835–1921 9. Danse macabre Op.40 Jacques Offenbach 1819–1880 The Danse macabre began its life as a song setting in 1873, the lyrics telling the grisly 6. Orphée aux enfers (Can-Can) story of a scene in a graveyard, with Death playing the fiddle and skeletons darting Offenbach’s treatment of the Orpheus legend was an irresistible and irreverent send-up through the shadows. Saint-Saëns expanded this vocal setting into the much larger of both operatic convention and Parisian society, and was one of his greatest early symphonic poem we know today, incorporating an evocation of the midnight bells, successes. It was first performed in Paris in 1858, the inclusion of a saucy Can-Can in extending fugal passages and a jaunty version of the Dies Irae plainchant from the the score being designed to outrage its audiences. It outraged some and delighted others, medieval Mass for the Dead. and has since become his unofficial signature tune, its melodies and rhythms conjuring up a vivid picture of Parisian nightclubs and harmlessly illicit pleasures.