Film Favourites with the Yehudi Menuhin School Orchestra

This evening welcomes the orchestra of the Yehudi Menuhin School. This world-famous institution has been training young musicians since its inception in 1963, and many notable performers have come through its ranks. The ensemble is led tonight by school director Ashley Wass, a winner of the London International Piano Competition and a Naxos recording artist. Mr Wass will feature as soloist in Chopin’sPiano Concerto No 2, which in spite of its number was the first concerto he composed and is a virtuosic work of youthful inspiration set in flight by the emotions of first love. The rest of the programme is devoted to familiar film soundtracks, some specially composed and others co-opted for the purpose. Herrmann scored seven films for Alfred Hitchcock; his Psycho Suite is the most famous, in which he created what he called a ‘black and white sound’. Written for one of the most patriotic films of World War II, Walton’s music for Shakespeare’s Henry V was lauded by Laurence Olivier as ‘the most wonderful score I’ve ever heard on a film’. Mahler’s hauntingly beautiful Adagietto from Symphony No 5 was a soundtrack in A Death in Venice, and a version of Strauss’s highly popular Blue Danube Waltz was used by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.