John Wilson conducts Respighi’s 'Roman Trilogy'

Live at the BBC Proms: John Wilson conducts the Sinfonia of London in Verdi, Walton and Respighi's Roman Trilogy.

Presented by Ian Skelly, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Verdi: The Force of Destiny – overture
Walton: Cello Concerto

c.8.10pm
Interval: conductor Ben Gernon discusses how Rome - where Respighi lived from 1913 - became his home, professional base and creative muse.

c.8.30pm
Respighi: Roman Festivals
Respighi: Fountains of Rome
Respighi: Pines of Rome

Jonathan Aasgaard (cello)
Sinfonia of London
John Wilson (conductor)

John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London – hailed by critics as ‘peerless’ and ‘simply as good as it gets’ – are back for the first of two concerts this season. Ottorino Respighi’s love affair with Rome is captured in a trilogy of orchestral tone-poems – heat-soaked, colour-saturated works that invite the listener into the mercurial life of the Eternal City: festivals and dances, misty mornings and scented summer evenings, fanfares and solitary silence. The concert opens with Verdi’s much-loved overture to The Force of Destiny and Walton’s rhapsodic Cello Concerto, its ardent, yearning spirit perhaps a portrait of the composer’s own marriage. Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard is the soloist.