Classical Music - ‘Southern Winds’

“I would like to headline this piece ‘scared by Schoenberg? Don’t be?’” says Anna Tabor, who is conducting the latest Musicians of All Saints concert this weekend. “The piece we are playing, his Chamber Symphony no. 1, is over 100 years old. It’s quite an early piece, and it’s very romantic. It’s quite detailed, and needs some absorption, but it is not from the later period in his career when he started to become rather inaccessible, when he started using a mathematical system to compose music. From about 1916 Schoenberg came to the conclusion that music could get no further in its current form and started playing about with tonality, rather like James Joyce played with narrative in literature in a similar period. But that was later. In this piece you can hear elements of Mahler and Strauss. Sir Peter Copley and I will both be giving a little introductory talk on the composer before the concert.”

“The concert will open with a work by the locally trained Chinese composer Fung Lam", she continues, "then we will play a romantic piece full of folk melodies by Dvorak, Serenade in D Minor. We will end with a piece by the Frenchman Milhad from 1928, La Creation du Monde, which was highly influenced by jazz, and was originally performed for ballet in front of a Rousseau-esque primitivist backdrop.” AG