Music for the Theatre

Live from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, this week Penny Gore explores music inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is joined by tenor Stephen Chambers and RCS students to perform an abridged semi-staged version of Much Ado about Nothing, featuring incidental music by Erich Korngold. Written in 1918-19, this was one of Korngold’s first Shakespeare-inspired works – he went on to re-orchestrate Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1934 and began to compose songs based on Twelfth Night three years later.