BBC Proms - 2009 - Prom 67: Janacek, McCabe, Dvorak - Part 1

From the Royal Albert Hall, London. Presented by Louise Fryer. Forest life abounds in this concert. Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen was based on a newspaper comic-strip adventure, a story of forest-dwellers both animal and human, and nature's ever-turning circle of life and death. Some of Janacek's most engaging and luminous music was selected by the Czech conductor Vaclav Talich and re-orchestrated to form this suite. John McCabe celebrates his 70th birthday in 2009, and the Proms marks it with a performance of his Horn Concerto, commissioned by the BBC in 2007. The soloist is David Pyatt, a past principal horn with the BBC NOW. It is a work infused with the shifting moods and smoky lines of West Coast jazz, but there is also a contrast between urban up-tempo sections and the slower pace of the rainforest soundscapes that open and close the concerto. David Pyatt (horn) BBC National Orchestra of Wales Jac van Steen (conductor) Janacek, arr. Talich: The Cunning Little Vixen (suite) John McCabe: Horn Concerto (Rainforest IV).