SCO 2021: Death In A Nutshell

Mystical contemplations and romantic longings come together in this passionate programme conducted by Scotland’s most celebrated living composer, Sir James MacMillan. 

Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner may not have agreed on many musical matters, but they showed a similar tenderness in the concert’s central pieces. The Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony found fame in the soundtrack to Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, but forms a deeply personal expression of yearning and emotion amid the Symphony’s furious drama. Wagner wrote his touching Siegfried Idyll as a heartfelt birthday gift for his wife Cosima, transforming heroic themes from his gargantuan Ring cycle into music of aching intimacy. 

MacMillan opens with Charles Ives’s miniature musical drama posing philosophical questions to the cosmos, and closes with the first performances of a brand-new work by one of Scotland’s most accomplished and exciting young composers, Ayrshire-born Jay Capperauld. 

Ives The Unanswered Question 
Mahler Adagietto, from Symphony No 5 
Wagner Siegfried Idyll 
Capperauld Death in a Nutshell (SCO Commission, World Premiere) 
 
Sir James MacMillan Conductor 

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Presented by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra