St Albans Symphony Orchestra Summer Concert Saturday 1st July 2023 St Saviour’s Church

St Albans Symphony Orchestra

Conducted by Christopher Stark, SASO will play Mussorgsky’s Prelude to Khovanschchina, Scriabin’s Reverie, and De Falla’s El Amor Brujo Suite. Following the interval, the concert will conclude with Borodin’s second Symphony.

Mussorgsky composed an opera called Khovanschchina, but had only written the piano score before he died. Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich both completed their own versions of the complete work.

When Alexander Scriabin came to Saint Petersburg in November 1898, he brought as a gift for his patron and publisher M. P. Belyaev the full score of an orchestral work named Prélude, a short miniature in E Minor and ternary form. Until then, Scriabin had never composed for the orchestra, excepting some unpublished pieces, and for that reason he wrote this piece in complete secrecy and without consulting anybody.

de Falla had been working in Paris for seven years when the Great War broke out in 1914 and forced him to move back to his native Madrid. The ballet El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician) was written in just six months shortly after his return, to a commission from the flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio and her family. The work was a one-act gypsy ballet in 12 short movements, with songs using a libretto from an ancient European folk story. 

Symphony No. 2 by Alexander Borodin was composed intermittently between 1869 and 1876. It is considered the most important large-scale work completed by the composer himself. It has many melodic resemblances to both Prince Igor and Mlada, two theatre works that diverted Borodin’s attention on and off during the six years of composition.