Haydn’s Symphony No. 93 with Richard Egarr

Ahead of Veteran’s Day, the enduring themes of grief, sacrifice and premature death are embedded in this program, with composers reflecting on their experiences of war and its lasting legacy. Under the baton of beloved Artistic Partner Richard Egarr, and for the first time in over 20 years, the SPCO performs John Adams’ monumental work for baritone and chamber orchestra, “The Wound-Dresser”. First commissioned by the orchestra in 1989 and sung here by British baritone Roderick Williams, the elegiac vignettes are set to Walt Whitman’s poem of the same name and detail the poet’s experiences as a compassionate hospital volunteer in the American Civil War. Williams also performs his own arrangement of George Butterworth’s song cycle “A Shropshire Lad”. He breathes fresh perspective into these haunting songs which are named after a small book of pastoral poems from the turn of the 19th century, in which the poet meditates on the young men of the English countryside who died young while answering the call to arms. While serving in World War I, Butterworth himself died just five years after he’d completed this song cycle, when many of the young men in the trenches beside him would have also carried the pocket-sized book of poems into battle.
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