Repertoire

GUSTAV HOLST: Second Suite in F for Military Band (1911) 11′
PERCY ALDRIDGE GRAINGER: Molly on the Shore (1907/1920) 4′
ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT: Symphonic Songs for Band (1957) 14′
JOHN BARNES CHANCE: Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1965) 7′
VICENT EGEA: Variations “Goodbye Lord” (2007) 12 ′
FRANCO CESARINI: Old Russian Romances (2012) 13′

Popular songs and dances from around the world are a marvellous musical heritage. The melodic and rhythmic characteristics of one’s own culture or the exoticism of a foreign one have caught the ear of many a composer. This concert is an invitation to journey through these repertoires and to enjoy symphonic instrumentation that makes them shine.

Holst proposes seven English melodies to us Second Suite in F for Military Band (Second suite in Fa for military band); Grainger, two Irish dances in the famous score Molly on the Shore (Molly on the Coast), and Bennett, the great orchestrator of hit Broadway musicals, makes us vibrate with a peasant party at the end of Symphonic Song for Band (Symphonic song for band). Tradition takes us to Korea to hear the song "Arirang" and the variations composed by Chance, and to the Basque Country with the Variations “Agur Jaunak”, of Aegean. The last work is Cesarini's vision of popular Russia, so distant and at the same time so familiar after centuries of cultural exchange between one end and the other of old Europe.

Performers

Barcelona Symphony Band
José R. Pascual-Vilaplana, conductor