deFilharmonie . Edo De Waart

The successful British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage (1960) is well known for his driving jazzy rhythms and spicy harmonies. He has carved out a musical path of his own between modernity and tradition, certainly in his symphonic work, which is quite simply spectacular. Expectations for his Cello Concerto are therefore high. To play it, we welcome back an old friend as soloist, the Welsh conductor and cellist Paul Watkins. He began his career by winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in 1988 and made his name as an interpreter of contemporary British music. He gave proof of that last year in a brilliant performance of Sir William Walton's Cello Concerto in tandem with deFilharmonie. After the interval, the orchestra will be playing Aaron Copland's Third Symphony, a work that Edo de Waart is more than at home with. Early on in his career the chief conductor of deFilharmonie spent a year as assistant to Leonard Bernstein in New York; later, he was appointed artistic director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. All that experience has steeped him in the 'typical America' evident in this symphony written at the end of the Second World War.