Llewellyn One: Seven Deadly Sins

“The finale throws us into its hurly-burly almost immediately, with a whirlwind passage for the strings leading to one of the most famous of all themes in Sibelius’ music, that in which, as Donald Tovey famously described it, Thor swings his hammer…”

Australian composer Holly Harrison’s genre-defying “Fizzin’ Fury” is inspired by musical genres associated with moshing and upbeat movement. The fury side embraces the heaviness of doom metal, punk, and progressive rock, while the fizz captures the energy of electronic dance music, disco, and dixieland.

“Lazy bones are for the Devil’s stockpot…” Read the English text for Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins online, translated by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman.

“Hear the ecclesiastical menace of the family in Sloth,” writes Angus McPherson, “the urgent strings in Anger, the cruel, a capella Barbershop Quartet of Gluttony, the valiant tenor aria in Greed and the devastating triumph of Anna I over Anna II in Envy’s grim march…”

Stravinsky’s Circus Polka was commissioned for the Barnum and Bailey circus. Despite the elephants’ apparent distaste, the act was repeated 425 times.