Bristol Symphony Orchestra: Liszt Piano Concerto with BBCYM winner Ryan Wang

Music Director Robert Weaver leads the Bristol Symphony Orchestra in a deeply moving programme that traces the profound human cost of war through works of haunting beauty and quiet reflection, performed on the weekend of Remembrance Sunday.

Ryan Wang piano
Robert Weaver conductor
Bristol Symphony Orchestra

Programme
Sutton War Horse Suite
Liszt Piano Concerto No 1
Butterworth The Banks of Green Willow
Vaughan Williams Symphony No 3, Pastoral

The evening opens with Adrian Sutton’s War Horse Suite, drawn from the National Theatre’s acclaimed production returning to UK stages this year. This evocative score follows a young boy and his beloved horse from the fields of Devon to the battlefields of France, weaving together the innocence of home with the brutal realities of the Western Front.

BBC Young Musician of the Year 2024 Ryan Wang performs Liszt’s Piano Concerto No 1, a work of soaring Romantic passion that reminds us of the artistic heritage forever altered by the Great War. Wang’s exceptional artistry brings new life to music from an age when such youthful brilliance was too often silenced by conflict.

George Butterworth’s The Banks of Green Willow follows. An achingly beautiful English pastoral that gains profound poignancy from the knowledge that its composer fell at the Somme in 1916, aged just 31. The work stands as both musical masterpiece and memorial to a generation lost.

The concert concludes with Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No 3, Pastoral, born from the composer’s own experience as a stretcher-bearer in France. Far from idyllic, this haunting symphony captures the desolate landscapes and profound silences left in war’s wake. A meditation on memory, loss, and the long shadows cast by conflict.

Together, these works create a powerful musical remembrance, honouring both those who fell and the enduring human spirit that finds meaning in art even amid the darkest chapters of history.