‘Drums and trumpets in C have been blaring in my head,’ wrote Robert Schumann in 1845, ‘I have no idea what will come of it.’
What did come of it was the symphony we know as Schumann’s Second – a defiant, joyous and spiritually uplifting work that shared its key, its power and its rigour with the ‘Great’ symphony by Franz Schubert that helped inspire it. Schumann’s last symphony, dedicated to Norway’s then Head of State, is as thrilling as it is profound.
Before Schumann, up-and-coming trombone soloist Emilie Synnøve Liknes is the soloist in the concerto trombonists love more than any other – the touching, comic and tender score by Danish composer Launy Grøndahl. To set that piece up, Lawrence Foster opens the concert with a work in which you can lose yourself entirely: Gershwin’s bustling, charming meeting of US attitude with French style, An American in Paris.