John Wilson Conducts Respighi’s ‘Roman Trilogy’
19:30 Fri 24 Jul 2026 Royal Albert Hall
Programme
- The Force of Destiny – overture(8 mins)
- Cello Concerto(28 mins)
- interval
- Roman Festivals(25 mins)
- Fountains of Rome(15 mins)
- Pines of Rome(21 mins)
Performers
- Jonathan Aasgaardcello
- John Wilsonconductor
About This Event
John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London – hailed by critics as ‘peerless’ and ‘simply as good as it gets’ – are back for the first of two concerts this season. Ottorino Respighi’s love affair with Rome is captured in a trilogy of orchestral tone-poems – heat-soaked, colour-saturated works that invite the listener into the mercurial life of the Eternal City: festivals and dances, misty mornings and scented summer evenings, fanfares and solitary silence. The concert opens with Verdi’s much-loved overture to The Force of Destiny and Walton’s rhapsodic Cello Concerto, its ardent, yearning spirit perhaps a portrait of the composer’s own marriage. Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard is the soloist.
Recorded for broadcast on BBC TV and BBC iPlayer
Jonathan Aasgaard © Mark McNulty
