NHK Symphony Orchestra Special Concert

The NHK Symphony Orchestra, which is truly Japan's top orchestra and has received worldwide acclaim for its recent overseas tours, will appear at Fukuoka Symphony Hall with a high-profile program featured in this fall's subscription concert.
Conductor Leonard Slatkin and the NHK Symphony Orchestra have been working together consistently for a long time since their first collaboration in 1984. In Japan, when people hear of British composers, they tend to think of Elgar, composer of the marches "Dignity" and "Love's Greeting," or of Holst, composer of the suite "The Planets," but Leif Vaughan Williams is a close friend of Holst and is known as a major composer in Europe and America. The five Variants on "The Rich and the Lazarus" is a beautiful pastoral piece that incorporates English folk songs, and the beautiful programming that leads fluidly into Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto that follows should be heard with an open ear. The violin music of Ray Cheng, who has a classical career and has been fascinating the world with his own style, will be performed to your heart's content. The main program will be Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5, which was composed and premiered during the wartime period of World War II, but which is steeped in a prayer for peace. The third movement, the Romanza, and other melodic beauties will envelop you in a heart-wrenching melody. He left nine symphonies during his lifetime, and his lyrical music, rich in the essence of folk songs, will surely sharpen the listener's sensitivity. Since his works are rarely performed in Japan, don't miss this opportunity to hear them spun by a first-rate orchestra.