Scheherazade | Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

A display of quintessentially Czech music from two Bohemian legends, with Smetana’s exhilarating Overture to his first and most enduring comic opera The Bartered Bride and Dvorák’s magnificent Cello Concerto, performed by world-class cellist Natalie Clein. Although composed in America, it expresses the melodic inflections derived from Czech folk music with a continuous flow of invention and lyricism.

Young Spanish Maestro Eduardo Portal will lead the orchestra in the tale of ‘One Thousand and One Nights’ in Rimsky-Korsakov’s colourful epic, Scheherazade. The mysteriously haunting sound of the violin voice of Scheherazade, as she calms the Sultan’s menacing brass fan fares, along with the strumming of the harp, calls to mind a mystical far-away land

‘She is a graceful, lyrical player with a sound like a fine-spun silver thread. Yet I was both impressed and emotionally moved by her playing of [Britten's] third suite. Clein was alert to every passing nuance.’ The Times