Bristol Symphony Orchestra

Join conductor Robert Weaver and the Bristol Symphony Orchestra as they mark the 60th birthday of Bristol-based composer John Pickard, whose orchestral and chamber works feature regularly on concert programmes in Britain and around the world, including the BBC Proms.

Robert Weaver conductor
Gareth Brynmor John baritone

Wagner Lohengrin: prelude to Act 1
Pickard Binyon Songs (Orchestral version)
Beethoven Symphony No 6 in F major “Pastoral”, Op 68

Baritone and Kathleen Ferrier Award-winner, Gareth Brynmor John, joins the orchestra to perform Pickard’s Binyon Songs, a song cycle based on a set of poems by Laurence Binyon which explore Nature: its indifference to human aspirations and desires, and its renewing power in the context of a corrupted and ever-changing world. This is a unique opportunity to hear the first live performance of the song cycle, which will be introduced by the composer himself. The evening opens with Wagner’s atmospheric Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin, a musical depiction of a vision of the Holy Grail descending to earth, and culminates in Beethoven’s symphonic visit to the Austrian countryside: in his own words, a ‘ramble for a while through bushes, woods, under trees, through grass, and around rocks,’ that includes storms, partying, feasting and dancing.