LSO Live presents the world premiere recording of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s large-scale orchestral work Speranza (‘Hope’), a piece commissioned by the LSO as part of Turnage’s residency with the orchestra in early 2013. Turnage is one of the most admired composers of his generation, and has long been associated with the London Symphony Orchestra. Daniel Harding appears in this his conducting debut for LSO Live.

Speranza is in many ways Turnage’s most ambitious and symphonic composition for orchestra to date. The piece is a monument to the power of optimism in a bleak world—‘I started working on the piece while thinking about the absence of hope. I wanted to lift people up’, says Turnage. Each of the four movements are titled ‘Hope’ in a different language; Arabic, German, Irish and Hebrew.

Speranza is coupled here with From the Wreckage, described by The Times as ‘outstanding: the music begins hellishly but gradually picks up a bluesy swing …’. Premiered in 2005, the piece was written for Håkan Hardenberger who reprises the role of soloist for this release. The three internal sections of From the Wreckage are marked by the soloist’s change of instrument—first flugelhorn, then trumpet, and finally piccolo trumpet.