The Fulham Symphony Orchestra returns to Hammersmith Town Hall on Saturday, March 19, to perform music from American and French composers.
The ambitious amateur orchestra – formed in 1958 as the Fulham Municipal Orchestra, and who also rehearse at the town hall – now pack a real punch in their mission to push musical boundaries and premiere new or rarely heard musical works.
This includes dazzling composition Harmonielehre from pioneering American composer John Adams, and will conclude the otherwise all-French programme with mezzo soprano Catherine Hopper starring in Chausson’s Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer (Poem of Love and the Sea).
Speaking of the John Adams piece, concert organiser Sharon Robinson described it by saying: “Imagine a supertanker suddenly powered by rockets and launching itself from the sea, past San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and into space.
“This is the vision that inspired the American composer John Adams to write the pounding, hair-raising opening of his orchestral piece Harmonielehre (The Study of Harmony).
“The piece is a sensuous dreamscape, the gorgeous surface of American minimalism meeting the lush late-Romantic world of Mahler and Sibelius and concluding raucously with what Adams calls a ‘bull run in E flat major’,” she added.
The Fulham Symphony Orchestra also welcome fast-rising mezzo soprano Catherine Hopper to sing Ernst Chausson’s painfully beautiful meditation on love’s transience, the Poème de l’Amour et de la Mer. And the programme is rounded off with two short orchestral showpieces by Maurice Ravel.
The concert begins at 7.30pm.
Maurice Ravel – Alborado del Gracioso
Maurice Ravel (arr. Grainger) – La vallée des cloches
Ernest Chausson – Poeme de l’amour et de la mer feat. Catherine Hopper mezzo soprano
John Adams – Harmonielehre
