Dvořák, Walker & Schumann

Sir Simon Rattle conducts Dvorák, Schumann and George Walker, in a concert filled with feelings that run too deep for words. Music starts where words leave off – and in George Walker’s Lilacs, the poetry of Walt Whitman is simply the starting point for an even more fantastic emotional journey. It’s the beautiful, haunted heart of a concert that begins with Dvorák’s playful homage to the New World, and ends with Schumann’s most personal (some might say greatest) symphony. For Sir Simon Rattle, it’s all about what lies behind the notes on the page – whether Dvorák’s warm-hearted nostalgia, or the musical love-notes to his wife Clara that Schumann threaded throughout his Second Symphony. And at the centre of it all, there’s a rare British hearing for Lilacs. This ravishing exploration of longing and loss won a Pulitzer Prize in 1996, and if you’ve heard Nicole Cabell perform at the Royal Opera, you’ll know that she makes every note tell a story.