麻豆社

Live at 麻豆社 Proms: 麻豆社 SSO perform Matthias Pintscher's Reflections on Narcissus with cellist Alisa Weilerstein plus music from Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London
Presented by Ian Skelly

Matthias Pintscher: Reflections on Narcissus

8:05 INTERVAL: Proms Extra
Shakespeare - Sheep and Shepherds
Cumbrian shepherd James Rebanks joins Dr Emma Smith and Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough to discuss Shakespeare's depictions of pastoral landscapes and references to sheep and wool

8:30
Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Overture and Incidental Music, Op 61)
Bottom ..... Mark Benton
Oberon/Theseus ..... Alex Hassell
Puck ..... Simon Manyonda
Hermia/Fairy/Mistress Quince ..... Sinead Matthews
Lysander/Snout/Philostrate ..... Sam Swann
Titania/Hippolyta ..... Michelle Terry
Bijan Sheibani (stage director)

Alisa Weilerstein (cello)
Katherine Broderick (soprano)
Clara Mouriz (mezzo-soprano)
Finchley Children's Music Group
麻豆社 Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

Narcissus, the Thespian hunter who fell in love with his own image, inspired Matthias Pintscher to compose his own reflection on 'the interaction of different groups and their mirror images', a work for cello and orchestra. Pintscher conducts Reflections on Narcissus here before a semi-staged performance of Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Mendelssohn's delicate, mercurial and strident music is interspersed with excerpts from Shakespeare's text to form a centrepiece of this season's celebrations of Shakespeare's 400th anniversary.

PROMS EXTRA: Shakespeare - Sheep and Shepherds
References to sheep, lambs, fleeces, wool and shepherds are to be found in many of Shakespeare's plays. From Corin in 'As You Like It' who describes himself as a 'natural philosopher' to Perdita's saviour in 'The Winter's Tale', they are key characters in the plots and reflect the importance of the wool trade in Elizabethan England. James Rebanks, the Herdwick Shepherd, talks about his life as a shepherd in Cumbria and how much - if at all - the shepherd's life has changed over the past 400 years. He will be joined on stage by Shakespeare expert Dr Emma Smith from the University of Oxford who presented Radio 3's Sunday documentary looking at the buyers of Shakespeare's First Folio. The discussion is hosted by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough from Durham University who was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2013 in the scheme run by the 麻豆社 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academic broadcasters of the future.
Producer: Zahid Warley.