Graham Ross conducts the Salomon Orchestra in the first concert of their new season of Works for Stage and Screen. The suite from Rózsa’s Oscar-winning score for Ben-Hur is followed by Kodaly’s Háry János suite. Rota’s suite La Strada is taken from his ballet based on music he wrote for the Fellini film. 

The concert opens with the suite from Miklós Rózsa’s Oscar-winning score for Ben-Hur – widely considered his greatest. One of the longest film scores ever composed, it was described by Roger Hickman as “the last universally acknowledged score created in the classical Hollywood tradition prior to Star Wars”. 

Zoltán Kodály’s opera Háry János, first performed in 1926, introduces Hungarian folk music to grand opera. The story is of a veteran hussar in the Austrian army in the first half of the 19th century who sits in the village inn regaling his listeners with fantastic tales of heroism. The orchestral suite, extracted from the opera by Kodály, was first performed in 1927.  

Nino Rota’s score for Fellini’s 1954 film La Strada was one of an incredible 13 film scores he completed that year. Rota’s output includes not only 150 film scores, but 10 operas, 5 ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works. The orchestral suite was taken from the eponymous ballet he wrote for La Scala in 1966, based on music from the Fellini film.