BBC SSO 2019-20 Season Afternoon Performance: Love, Death and Mozart

Love, death and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Tchaikovsky didn’t just enjoy Mozart’s music: he practically worshipped it. “Mozart is the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the sphere of music”, he declared – and in his orchestral suite Mozartiana he chose four of his favourite Mozart pieces and simply drenched them in his own, unmistakable combination of uninhibited affection and glowing orchestral colour. It’s a rare treat in the concert hall, and the sweetest imaginable way to end a concert that begins with a luminous evocation of an Orkney wedding by the late – and much-missed – Martin Dalby, the Scottish composer and former Head of Music for BBC Scotland. As a powerful contrast, Martyn Brabbins links these two labours of love with two very different Russian rarities: Alfred Schnittke’s altogether more sardonic tribute to Mozart, and Mussorgsky’s ‘Songs and Dances of Death’. Don’t be misled by that morbid-sounding title: you’ll never hear anything more blackly comic – or a more entertaining showcase for a great voice.

The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.