Simon Callow reads from the German Romantics
Tonight鈥檚 Proms Extra explores an intellectual movement that for sheer atmosphere, tension and mystique sweeps all before it.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, amid the tumult of the industrial revolution, a group of artists rejected the classical world, instead harking back to medieval times in their search for inspiration and an image of social unity.
Their protagonists are nuns, knights and simple country folk, and they like nothing more than to cast these characters deep into worlds of terrifying darkness and uncertainty. That movement is German Romanticism.
As an accompaniment to this evening's performance of Brahms's Piano Concerto, join us to hear actor and writer Simon Callow reading from some the important writers of the German Romantic movement from Goethe to the Brothers Grimm.
Simon Callow came to prominence with his critically acclaimed performance as Mozart in the original stage production of Peter Shaffer鈥檚 Amadeus at the National Theatre in 1979. Since then he鈥檚 acted in scores of productions for stage and screen. His lifelong passion for classical music has seen him directing opera productions and appearing alongside various orchestras around the world, as well as fronting documentaries and writing about composers and their work. His one man shows exploring the lives of Shakespeare and Dickens have toured the United Kingdom and internationally. Notable recent acting work has included his performance as Pozzo in Beckett's Waiting for Godot opposite Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart and Ronald Pickup; and as the psychiatrist in Chichester Festival Theatre's production of Peter Shaffer's Equus.
Presented by Clemency Burton Hill.
