PAST CONCERTS
Saturated in Myself - Tchaikovsky’s Final Year
Destiny’s shadow hangs powerfully over Tchaikovsky’s last symphony. For, nine days after he conducted its 1893 premiere in St. Petersburg, the composer was dead. He was just 53 years old. His doctors blamed his mysterious death on cholera, contracted from drinking un-boiled water. But whether he drank that glass deliberately remains the subject of intense debate.
Odyssey explores his last two major orchestral works. One, a light-hearted piece of brilliant balletic fantasy, the other this melancholic symphony, which Tchaikovsky described as being “saturated” in his own personality and the best thing he had ever written.
Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker (Excerpts)
Tcahikovsky -Symphony No. 6 Pathétique
Peter Ash - Conductor
Ian Harris - Narrator
Dominic Rye - Narrator
Saturated in Myself - Tchaikovsky’s Last Year
Russian composer, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died unexpectedly days after the premiere of his 6th Symphony. Odyssey asks whether there was a link between his death and the symphony’s melancholy final movement.
Superman? Friedrich Nietzsche and Music
When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that God was dead in his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he invited humanity to be superhuman and create their own morality. Richard Wagner had inspired this idea with works like his 1845 music drama Tannhäuser. But thirty years later, things had changed.
In Wagner's final opera Parsifal, a young man is sent to redeem the suffering of a religious order, whose leader is suffering from an incurable wound, caused by his lack of self-control. It caused Nietzsche to turn on Wagner and denounce him.
Richard Strauss was also inspired by Nietzsche’s idea of the superman and his mighty tone poem based on Thus Spoke Zarathustra expressed his own distinctive hopes and dreams for humanity.
Wagner - Prelude to Act I of Tannhäuser
Wagner - Transformation and Good Friday Music from Parsifal
R. Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra
Peter Ash - Conductor
Dominc Rye- Narrator
Source: https://cadoganhall.com/whats-on/odyssey-festival-orchestra-superman
Ossian’s Shadow: How the Idea of Scotland seized the European Romantic Imagination
The spirit of the fake Gaelic poet Ossian inspired a generation of European romantics with the idea of Scotland as a land filled with wild crags, magical caves, ancient castles, melancholy warriors, and neurotic heroines.
A Hopeless Case? The Misunderstood Genius of Modest Mussorgsky
Odyssey Festival Orchestra’s band of talented musicians, aged 18–30, continues to refresh the concert-going experience with a programme that explores the career of composer Modest Mussorgsky.
No-one understood
Odyssey Festival Orchestra’s band of talented young musicians continues to refresh the concert-going experience with a programme that examines the influences behind Mahler’s epic Fifth Symphony which the composer claimed after its premiere that no-one had understood.
Lollipops and Blood, An Evening with Sir Thomas Beecham
Take a voyage around the repertoire of Sir Thomas Beecham, as the Odyssey Festival Orchestra performs music championed by the legendary conductor.
Every Tree Speaks to Me! How the Natural World influenced composers
The dynamic young players of the Odyssey Festival Orchestra embark on a musical journey exploring three great composers’ responses to the natural world around them.
Astonish Me!
An exploration of repertoire inspired by two dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and Leonid Massine, and commissioned by the great impresario Diaghilev and his Ballet Russes.
The Joker
The Joker explores composer Dmitri Shostakovich’s relationship with the authorities in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, with excerpts from opera and ballet music and complete performances of two of his greatest works from this period.
Prometheus: Romantic Superhero
The debut concert of Odyssey Festival Orchestra under its Artistic Director, Peter Ash, explores why the mythological figure of Prometheus so fascinated early Romantic artists.