Ivor Gurney A Gloucestershire Rhapsody

Gurney started his musical career as a chorister at Gloucester Cathedral in 1900 followed by a spell as assistant organist. He went to the Royal College of Music to study under Stanford, then after World War I, in which he was wounded, gassed and shell-shocked, he returned to the Royal College to study under Vaughan Williams. He left in 1921 and returned to Gloucester, but was declared insane in 1922.

He published one volume of poetry during the war and another in 1919, both enjoying some success; but his greatness lies in his eighty-two published songs, most of which were written between 1919 and 1922. In the last years of his life various friends, including Marion Scott, Howells, Finzi, and Ferguson, prepared the best of his work for publication, but over 200 songs remain in manuscript, along with 6 violin sonatas, 5 string quartets and A Gloucestershire Rhapsody for orchestra.

Although completed in 1921, A Gloucestershire Rhapsody, a remarkable work that portrays Gurney's view of Gloucestershire, has never been performed, although it was listed in contemporary biographical summaries as being one of his most important works. Ian Venables and Philip Lancaster are to edit the work for this premiere.

Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor

This was the only piano concerto Schumann ever completed having started 3 others in 1828, 1829 and 1839 and was premiered in 1846 in Leipzig conducted by Ferdinand Hiller with his wife Clara on the piano. The concerto started life as a Phantasie in one self-contained movement, described by Schumann as ‘something between symphony, concerto and grand sonata’, but in 1845, because a full-length concerto was more marketable than a one-movement work, he added an Intermezzo and the finale.

The audience at the premiere was not impressed by the lyricism and subtlety of Schumann's Piano Concerto. Liszt described the work as “a concerto without piano.” Clara became its greatest advocate and performed the concerto to eventual acclaim throughout Europe both during and after Schumann's lifetime. She saw herself as the keeper of the “classical” tradition, against the hypertheatricality of the piano virtuosos of Liszt's generation. “Before Liszt,” she would say, “people used to play; after Liszt, they pounded or whispered. He has the decline of piano playing on his conscience.”

Mendelssohn Scottish Symphony

Also in A minor, Mendelssohn’s 3rd Symphony was dedicated to Queen Victoria and first performed in Leipzig in 1842. It is thought that a painting seen on a trip to Scotland in 1829 had inspired the 33-year-old composer. The emotional scope of the work is wide, consisting of a grand first movement, a joyous second movement of possibly Scottish folk music, a slow movement maintaining an apparent struggle between love and fate, and a finale that takes its components from Scottish folk dance. No direct quotations from Scottish music have however been identified.