Making America: Blanchard, Herrmann & Latimer

Hollywood dreams meet all-American nightmares. Fabien Gabel conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in music from Vertigo and The Sea Hawk and dives into the myths and memories of a new American century.

In Hollywood, exiles and outsiders weaved American dreams, writing music that made the silver screen shine. Music from the golden age of the movies frames tonight’s concert, and from the haunted obsession of Bernard Herrmann’s classic Hitchcock score to Korngold’s The Sea Hawk, a swashbuckler from Vienna’s brightest star – no emotion is off limits. It sounds glorious too – even without the pictures.

This is the first chance to hear music from Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, whose barnstorming run at the Metropolitan Opera in 2021 proved a major landmark in American music. Blanchard’s Grammy-winning 'opera in jazz' explores a troubled childhood in 1980s Louisiana, while Ryan Latimer’s brand new trumpet concerto with the young Austrian trumpeter Selina Ott takes its inspiration from the wildlife (real or imagined) of Florida.

Programme

Bernard Herrmann Suite from ‘Vertigo’
Ryan Latimer Bestia: Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra
Terence Blanchard Suite from ‘Fire Shut Up in my Bones’ (UK Premiere)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold Sea Hawk

Performers

Fabien Gabel conductor
Selina Ott trumpet
BBC Symphony Orchestra