BBC Now: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony

With his Symphony No. 7 Beethoven permanently realigned Western music’s fundamental relationship with rhythm. In the process he created some of the most compelling music of his age. Young Italian-Turkish conductor Nil Venditti places this momentous symphonic dance alongside music by a composer from the generation after Beethoven, one who picked up the master’s baton and ran with it: Louise Farrenc. The first half spotlights two Welsh composers born less than 40 years apart. Grace Williams’s jaunty Concert Overture, written in her mid-twenties, came ‘highly recommended’ after its entry in a Daily Telegraph competition in 1932–3. And Sir Karl Jenkins, one of the most popular composers of our time, wrote his Stravaganza especially for tonight’s soloist, Jess Gillam.