Prom 11: Debussy, Holt & Musorgsky

Debussy Nocturnes 25’ Simon Holt Troubled Light c21’ BBC commission: world premiere interval Musorgsky, orch. Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition 30’ Cantamus Girls’ Choir BBC National Orchestra of Wales Thierry Fischer conductor The first of this season’s BBC commissions marks the 50th-birthday year of recent British Composer Award-winner Simon Holt. His Troubled Light explores descriptions of colour by poets and artists. There’s more colour from Debussy – his delicate and exquisite Nocturnes, an aural response to James McNeill Whistler’s canvases – diffuse, evocative and strikingly original. The youthful voices of Cantamus join the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for the closing ‘Sirènes’, a dream-like evocation of a magical seascape. And rich orchestral colour, courtesy of another Frenchman, comes with perhaps the most famous orchestration of them all, Maurice Ravel’s of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. The individual paintings from the Russian’s stroll around an art gallery receive a vibrant new lease of life when stretched on to this huge orchestral canvas. Tickets cannot be exchanged refunded or resold.