About

Fifty musicians. One of England's great abbeys. Dvořák's New World at full power.

The Fulltone Symphony Orchestra returns to Bath Abbey with an evening built around one of the most loved symphonies ever written.

Dvořák composed his Ninth Symphony in New York in 1893, a Czech composer far from home, dazzled by America and aching for Bohemia. The result is music of enormous scale and deep feeling: the famous Largo, with its haunting cor anglais melody that a generation of Britons know from the Hovis advert, and a finale that will shake the stone beneath your feet. Neil Armstrong even took a recording of it to the Moon.

The first half is a journey of its own. Sibelius' Finlandia, the anthem Russia's censors tried to silence. Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, the nation's favourite, with violin soloist Katy Smith. James Horner's Oscar-winning Titanic, and John Barry's sweeping score for Dances With Wolves.

Five scores about homeland, longing and wide horizons, in a building that was made for sound like this. You shouldn't have to go to London for a night like this one.

Programme
Sibelius · Finlandia, Op. 26
Vaughan Williams · The Lark Ascending
Horner · Titanic: Suite
Barry · Dances With Wolves
Interval
Dvořák · Symphony No. 9 in E minor, "From the New World"

Violin soloist: Katy Smith
Conductor: Anthony Brown