Conductor Wayne Marshall working with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra. Photographs: Matthias Wurz (rehearsal pictures) & Geert Langelaar (interview pictures).
“The first thing to remember is this…,” Wayne Marshall, British conductor, dressed in casual all-black, took a seat in the Green Room. The afternoon rehearsal on Jan. 12 with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna (RSO Wien) had just ended a few minutes ago. Located at Vienna’s fourth district at the Austria Radio, the Grosser Sendesaal serves as main concert venue of he Radiokulturhaus, but it is also the home of the Austria’s only Radio Orchestra.
The 49-year-old musician paused for a refreshing sip of his soft drink and collected his thoughts. As he continued to speak he glanced thoughtfully across the small room, and with a gentle smile he said, “we are there to entertain the audience; and we are there to make music!“
It was Tuesday and the musical preparations for the concert on Friday, Jan. 15, progressed quickly. Just one more day of rehearsing of this week’s program, but those would take place at the Golden Hall at the Musikverein, a prestigious venue which for Wayne Marshall spark vivid memories, as we learned later.
As for the repertoire, it complements Marshall’s idea of entertaining the audience: Gustav Holst’s monumental orchestral suite The Planets (1918) as the center piece along with Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1943), together with the British piano-duo Jennifer Micaleff and Glen Inanga; and as an Austrian première the so-called Bright Cecilia Variations on a theme by Henry Purcell (2002), a collaborative work composed by some of the household names of contemporary British music, like Colin Matthews, Judith Weir or Magnus Lindberg. It comprises a set of five variations in diverse compositional styles to jazz, framed by the introduction of the original Purcell theme of Ode to St. Cecilia, concluding with a grand finale of the full orchestral forces.
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