Amid the daily reports of man’s inhumanity to man, it was a welcome relief to spend two hours in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall with this life-affirming programme from the BBC Philharmonic under chief conductor John Storgårds. The UK premieres of two BBC commissions, flanked by Copland’s rousing Fanfare for the Common Man and Nielsen’s titanic intrepid Fourth Symphony – “The Inextinguishable” – offered plenty of intellectual red meat and enough adrenalin-charged jollies to lift the most downtrodden spirits.
James Lee III likes to contemplate contemporary issues through the prism of history. In the Michigan-born composer’s piano concerto, Shades of Unbroken Dreams, Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech serves as a launchpad to reflect the ongoing struggle for equal rights, especially, he says, for people of colour and women. Cast in three movements, it opens with a vivid exploration of dreams, calm and troubled, before quarrying King’s text and ending in a blaze of optimism.
