Synopsis
Colin Davis conducts students from London's Royal Academy of Music and New York's Juilliard School in tonight's live concert at the Royal Albert Hall, which begins with two wartime works. Aaron Copland's majestic Fanfare for the Common Man for brass and percussion was written in 1942 as a tribute to those fighting the Second World War. In contrast, Ralph Vaughan Williams's bleak Sixth Symphony from 1948 suggests a desolate postwar landscape. The programme concludes with what is perhaps Hector Berlioz's best-known work, the dazzling Symphonie Fantastique, in which the composer explores his real life obsession with a beautiful actress. With Charles Hazlewood.