“In an all-Brahms programme, Christian Tetzlaff brought momentum and shape to the Violin Concerto, and Tilson Thomas made every note glow” (The Guardian) There is a sense that every concert the London Symphony Orchestra gets to give with its conductor laureate, Michael Tilson Thomas, is now a gift – this evening of Brahms came a little over a year after the announcement that he was being treated for an aggressive form of brain cancer. Yet if Tilson Thomas’s own dynamic energy now needs to be husbanded to some extent, this did not translate into any loss of momentum or intensity in the orchestra’s performance: small gestures – a lean towards the cellos here, a shimmy of the fingers to fade out the brass there – were enough to shape the music into the kind of long, elastic lines that make Brahms’s notes glow. PROGRAM Brahms: Violin Concerto, Serenade No. 1
LSO: Haitink conducts Mozart & Bruckner
The London Symphony Orchestra celebrates a milestone birthday of one of the greats of the conducting world, Bernard Haitink. Bernard Haitink is revered alike by the musicians of the orchestras he conducts and the music-lovers in the audience. A week after his 90th birthday, the London Symphony Orchestra – with which he has a particularly special partnership – celebrates this milestone with the conductor himself. Soloist Till Fellner – who describes Haitink as ‘a very noble man and musician’ – plays Mozart, before Haitink turns to Bruckner, a composer whose majestic symphonies have been at the centre of his career over the decades. PROGRAM Mozart: Piano Concerto No 22; Bruckner: Symphony No 4
LSO: Rattle conducts Christ on the Mount of Olives
In the words of Sir Simon Rattle, Beethoven is “absolutely inescapable”, especially in the year of his 250th anniversary. Nevertheless, Christ on the Mount of Olives is a rarely heard masterpiece and Beethoven’s only oratorio, which combines the emotive force of the composer’s later Missa Solemnis with the theatre of a Bach Passion. With orchestra, chorus and soloists, it tells the story of Jesus’ prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. “What Rattle made clear is that the music is full of life. It is hard to imagine this performance being bettered.” (Financial Times)
LSO: Kevin John Edusei conducts Mendelssohn & Schumann
German conductor Kevin John Edusei is regularly praised for the drama and tension that he brings to his music-making, and for his clear sense of architecture and attention to detail. In October 2020 he made his London Symphony Orchestra debut and leads the orchestra in a beautiful performance of the suite from Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Boulanger’s “D’un matin de printemps” and Schumann’s ‘Spring’ Symphony.
LSO: Michael Tilson Thomas & Yuja Wang at Barbican
Yuja Wang and Michael Tilson Thomas perform Rachmaninoff’s popular Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninoff, destined to be a legendary pianist, found this piece challenging, yet Yuja Wang makes it sound effortless, explaining her global concert success. Michael Tilson Thomas complements her inspiring performance with two heartfelt pieces: a beautiful miniature by Edvard Grieg and the famous Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, promising a remarkable musical experience. PROGRAM Grieg: The Last Spring; Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No 2; Beethoven: Symphony No 5
LSO: Michael Tilson Thomas & Yuja Wang at St. Luke’s
With some artists, just the name suffices. ‘Yuja Wang’s pianism inspires a sense of wonder,’ noted a critic after her Barbican solo. Partnered with Tilson Thomas in Shostakovich’s playful concerto for his teenage son, she’ll sparkle. Tilson Thomas starts with a letter from America, an homage to home by a composer voicing a nation. He then embraces Tchaikovsky’s folk-inspired melodies, blending romance and symphonic genius into a thrilling experience. PROGRAM Copland: Our Town; Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No 2; Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 2
LSO Opening Night 2021: Rattle conducts 100 years of British music
Tradition is about the present – and the future – as well as the past. Sir Simon Rattle opens the new season with a concert that spans 100 years of British music. When Ralph Vaughan Williams conceived his Pastoral Symphony, it wasn’t the misty fields of an imaginary England that inspired him. He was in France, on the Western Front – where the sound of a distant trumpet unlocked a vision vast enough to transcend the noise (if not the anguish) of the First World War. But then, British music has never conformed to easy stereotypes. In this opening concert of the new season, Judith Weir reads ancient Taoist poetry, and finds ideas of radical simplicity. Peter Maxwell Davies attends an all-night party (and finds a bracing hangover cure) on his adopted home of Orkney. And because music never stands still, Sir Simon Rattle introduces the world premiere of two movements from a new choral work by Julian Anderson, inspired by the poetry of exile. Not what you might expect … PROGRAM Purcell: Remember not, Lord, our offences; Tippett: Praeludium; Julian Anderson: Two movements from ‘Exiles’ (world premiere); Judith Weir: Natural History; Vaughan Williams: A Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No 3); Maxwell Davies: An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise
LSO: Simon Rattle & Leonidas Kavakos at Barbican
The 2020s meet the 1920s, as Sir Simon Rattle conducts Sibelius, Bartók, and the world premiere of Unsuk Chin’s new Violin Concerto. A new year, and a brand-new masterpiece from Unsuk Chin, the poetic, dazzlingly original musical mind behind the opera Alice in Wonderland. She’s called it Shards of Silence, and it prepares the way for a musical journey back to the 1920s – when Sibelius and Bartók found equally astonishing, equally uncompromising new ways of listening to the world. This is Chin’s second violin concerto. Her first is already a modern classic, and she hadn’t planned to write another – but when she heard the playing of Leonidas Kavakos, she broke her own rule. Naturally, he’s the soloist for tonight’s world-premiere performance, and since history demands context (even while you’re making it) Sir Simon Rattle completes the programme with Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony and Bartók’s brutal, brilliant Miraculous Mandarin Suite. PROGRAM: Chin: Violin Concerto No 2 (workd premiere); Sibelius: Symphony No 7; Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin – Suite
LSO: Harry Christophers conducts Haydn’s Creation
Haydn’s The Creation conducted by Harry Christophers with the London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra and an all-star team of soloists in a performance sung in English to mark the 40th anniversary of the Barbican Centre. Out of chaos comes wonder; from darkness, light. Haydn’s oratorio The Creation is more than just a gloriously tuneful retelling of the Book of Genesis. Inspired by Haydn’s visits to London and the optimism of the Enlightenment, it’s a celebration of the act of creativity itself, overflowing with majesty, humour and the joy of life. With its famous depictions of Chaos through the dawning of light to a tawny lion, a flexible tiger and a nimble stag and the great chorus, ‘The Heavens are telling’, the work has been a favourite since its first performance some 224 years ago.
LSO: Noseda conducts Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev
Gianandrea Noseda conducts Prokofiev’s ‘symphony of the greatness of the human spirit’, and Janine Jansen is the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s hugely popular Violin Concerto. Put aside all thoughts of turmoil and angst; Tchaikovsky wrote his Violin Concerto by the shores of Lake Geneva, surrounded by people he loved – and you can tell. Simone Lamsma is a most welcome guest and Gianandrea Noseda follows her performance in grand style, with a truly epic Russian symphony. In fact, it’s said that at the Moscow premiere in 1945, Prokofiev couldn’t begin his Fifth Symphony until an artillery barrage had fallen silent. This is music of iron and steel, and LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda is passionate about it. First, though, he puts down a marker for the future, with a new, Russian-inspired orchestral work by George Stevenson – a rising star of the LSO’s Panufnik Composers Scheme. PROGRAM Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Prokofiev: Symphony No 5; Stevenson: Vanishing City.