With triumphant energy, Chineke! Orchestra’s programme opens with Carlos Simon's tribute to Beethoven, launching the first live audience concert of Southbank Centre’s new season, Summer Reunion.
A commission by the Boston Symphony Orchestra commemorating the composer's 250th birthday, its title Fate Now Conquers derives from Beethoven's journal entry of 1815, quoting lines from the Iliad.
'But Fate now conquers; I am hers, and yet not she shall share / In my renown; that life is left to ev'ry noble spirit / And that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.'
Remnants for Poet and Orchestra by composer James B. Wilson and poet Yomi Ṣode is a lyrical response to London Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
Narrated by Ṣode, this emotionally charged piece is inspired by the iconic Reuters image of Patrick Hutchinson lifting a counter-protester to safety.
Chineke! alumnus Sheku Kanneh-Mason last performed with Chineke! on the Royal Festival Hall stage in 2016, the same year he won the prestigious BBC Young Musician competition.
Now a confirmed superstar on the classical music scene, he performs with Chineke! Orchestra once more in the timeless Dvorák Cello Concerto.
Chineke! has long championed the work of Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the gifted yet unjustly neglected contemporary of Holst and Vaughan Williams.
The programme closes with the high drama of Coleridge-Taylor's majestic Othello Suite.
Performers
Kevin John Edusei, conductor
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello
Yomi Sode, poet/narrator
Repertoire
Carlos Simon Fate Now Conquers
James B Wilson Remnants
Dvorak Cello Concerto in B minor
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Othello Suite