Westmorland Orchestra | 20 March 2027

Rivers of Music

Wagner - Siegfried's Rhine Journey

Smetana - Vltava

Errollyn Wallen - Mighty River

R. Schumann - Symphony no. 3 Rhenish 

Conductor - Helen Thomas

Rivers are a powerful metaphor representing the passage of time and the journey of life.

This concert features four ‘rivers of music’. Wagner’s Siegfried’s Rhine Journey depicts a sunrise, the flow of the river and Siegfried’s mixture of emotions including pain at leaving his beloved Brünnhilde, stirrings of courage, and an increasing sense of foreboding. 

Smetana’s Vltava has its source in the Bohemian forest: two flutes represent the two streams which burble and then merge as the musical river journeys past a peasant wedding, moonlit meadows, castles and wild ruins, the Rapids of St. John until it broadens at Prague and feeds into the Elbe River.

Errollyn Wallen CBE is Master of the King’s Music. Mighty River was written in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Wallen writes, “It is as if the perpetual motion of the music, like water, like time, through its sheer momentum, comes across the cries and echoes of human hearts and voices, singing out of suffering, repentance, humility and hope.”

After the interval we perform Schumann’s euphoric Symphony no. 3, the ‘Rhenish’ which includes an awe-inspiring depiction of Cologne Cathedral.  

https://www.westmorlandorchestra.org.uk/