Performers:
National Philharmonic Orchestra
Matthew Halls conductor

Programme
Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105 [21′].
Benjamin Britten
Four sea interludes Op. 33a from the opera Peter Grimes [16′].
... pause [20′].
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93 [26′].

The final bar of Jean Sibelius's Symphony No. 7 in C major has been compared by conductor Colin Davis to the closing of a coffin lid. Although the great Finn still had more than 30 years to live after it was written, it is one of his last completed works. The unusual one-movement form of the work, originally intended to be titled 'Fantasia Sinfonica', has become an interpretive challenge for critics and analysts. Tellingly, scholars who have unanimously described the work as revolutionary have differed in the justifications for their judgement.

Benjamin Britten's dark opera Peter Grimes, which tells the story of a fisherman suspected of murdering a juvenile journeyman, contains highly successful instrumental interludes which, in a slightly altered order and with minor alterations, were successfully published as a stand-alone orchestral suite shortly after the opera's premiere in 1945. They consist of Dawn - an illustration of a calm sea, Sunday Morning with the sound of tolling church bells imitated by the horn, the majestic nocturne Moonlight and the deathly terrifying Tempest.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Eighth Symphony received a less warm reception than the Seventh because, as the offended composer was to comment, 'the Eighth is better'. Undoubtedly Beethoven put more work into it than into its predecessor, as the sketches left behind testify. Performed for the first time under the baton of its increasingly hard-of-hearing author in Vienna in 1814, it was not dedicated to anyone, perhaps due to the cool reception of a work 'better' than Symphony No. 7.