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Rufus Wainwright’s Five Shakespeare Sonnets at the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Feb. 28, 2012

Rufus Wainwright’s <em>Five Shakespeare Sonnets</em> at the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Following the hugely successful US premiere of his opera, Prima Donna, Rufus Wainwright joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the UK premiere of his Five Shakespeare Sonnets for voice and orchestra on March 4. The performance, conducted by Rory MacDonald, takes place at the Barbican in London. Wainwright’s settings compliment a program featuring two other Shakespeare indebted works, Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Much Ado About Nothing Suite, op. 11.

Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle calls Five Shakespeare Sonnets, “an imaginative, emotionally probing and often beautiful suite.” Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and premiered by the orchestra in 2010, Wainwright’s five-movement suite sets the texts from Shakespeare’s Sonnet Nos. 43, 20, 10, 129, and 87. The germ of this luminous piece was in Wainwright’s acclaimed 2009 solo album,  All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu, where he originally set Sonnet 43, 20, and 10.  All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu is soon to be released in a new Schott New York publication, annotated and edited by the composer.

On his choice of text, Wainwright explains:

One cannot immerse themselves in Shakespeare’s sonnets and not be submerged, drowned, and finally resurrected a better human being. They are, hands down, the greatest works ever written.

Wainwright is vocal soloist and legendary British actress Siân Phillips will perform a reading of the selected sonnets. This performance is part of the BBC’s Music Nation: a weekend of performances throughout the UK that serves as part of the countdown to the London 2012 Festival.

For more information on the program, visit www.bbc.co.uk.

For more information on Rufus Wainwright, visit his composer profile on www.eamdllc.com and www.rufuswainwright.com.

Rufus Wainwright
Five Shakespeare Sonnets (2010)
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20’

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