📍 Where: Aspen Music Festival – YouTube
📅 When: Sunday, July 18 at 5:30 p.m. local time (MDT / UTC–6)
🎧 Program:
• Purcell/Stucky – Funeral Music for Queen Mary
• Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor, op. 85
• Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5 in D major
🎻 Soloist: Zlatomir Fung, cello
🎼 Conductor: Robert Spano
📺 Platform: YouTube – live and later available in the archive
Three centuries of English music come together in this live concert from the Aspen Music Festival, led by Robert Spano and featuring cellist Zlatomir Fung. The program opens with Steven Stucky’s 1991 orchestration of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary, composed in 1695 for the funeral of Mary II. Stucky approached the work not as a faithful reconstruction but as a modern reflection, blending historical material with contemporary sensibilities.
The centerpiece is Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a late, introspective masterpiece shaped by the emotional aftermath of the First World War. At just 26, Zlatomir Fung—winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and former Aspen fellow—takes on this iconic work, long associated with elegy and expressive depth.
The evening concludes with Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 5, completed during the Second World War and dedicated to Jean Sibelius. Drawing on thematic material from his opera The Pilgrim’s Progress, the symphony was received at its 1943 premiere as a message of solace and quiet resilience.
A live broadcast offering a nuanced exploration of the English orchestral tradition—and a showcase of a rising soloist with an already distinguished career.
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