Two portraits from a magician of orchestral colour, Richard Strauss – plus a young Mozart dances on the violin. Lisa Batiashvili is the perfect partner for Mozart’s elegant Concerto, in the final performance of her LSO Artist Portrait series, while Sir Antonio Pappano and the LSO bring out every twist and turn in Strauss’ stories. PROGRAM Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel, Ein Heldenleben; Mozart: Violin Concerto No 5
LSO: Pappano conducts Strauss, Liszt and Kendall
A blast of trumpets, a pounding of timpani: the opening of Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra heralds the rise of the sun. Stanley Kubrick used it to grab viewers’ attention in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey.But for Strauss, this is the dawn of an age full of questions: what does it mean to be alive? Joining the debate, Liszt’s Totentanz is a ferocious vision of mortality, complete with ghoulish jangling bones. And there’s a new work by Hannah Kendall, a composer whose music, in Pappano’s own words, ‘has an amazing ability to really grip the listener’. PROGRAM Kendall: O flower of fire (world premiere); Franz Liszt: Totentanz; Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra
LSO: Kirill Karabits conducts Mahler No. 4
Mahler isn’t necessarily massive, and his Fourth Symphony begins with sleighbells, birdsong, and a melody straight out of Mozart. It all seems deliciously simple. But this is Mahler, after all, and between that playful opening and the final portrayal of a child’s Heaven, there’s a whole universe of drama, emotion and heart-piercing beauty. With soprano Lucy Crowe bringing all her insight and vocal radiance to that extraordinary finale, it’ll sound lovelier and more blissful than ever.
LSO: Kirill Karabits conducts Bartok & Rozsa
Kirill Karabits conducts Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra – plus a rare performance of the Violin Concerto by Bartók’s fellow-Hungarian (and Hollywood legend) Miklós Rózsa. New worlds for old: from exile in America, Béla Bartók and Miklós Rózsa both longed for their native Hungary. Bartók imagined the nocturnal sounds of the Great Hungarian Plain, and transformed them into a defiant shout of hope and joy for a virtuoso orchestra. Rozsa, meanwhile, took time out from Hollywood to write a violin concerto that sings, dances and positively smoulders. It all adds up to a fabulously red-blooded evening of music from Kirill Karabits and LSO leader Roman Simovic: expect dark secrets, untamed melodies, and folk-rhythms in the raw. But it’s also a portrait of two composers grappling with the 20th century on their own, undaunted, terms. Today, Rózsa is still probably best known for classic film scores like Ben-Hur and Lust for Life: this rare performance of his Violin Concerto shows that even without the pictures, he can hold an audience spellbound.
LSO: Barbara Hannigan conducts Mahler & Messiaen
Blissed-out visions of heaven from Mahler and Messiaen: the irrepressible Barbara Hannigan conducts and dreams her way to glory. Olivier Messiaen sends up a prayer, and the skies themselves seem to ring with majestic, multicoloured sounds. Mahler gets inside the mind of a child, in a symphony of blue skies, jangling sleigh bells and sudden, rapturous visions. It’s a wild ride to heaven, and the extraordinary Barbara Hannigan is there to show us the way tonight. As a singer, there’s nothing Hannigan can’t do, and as a conductor she drives straight to the places that other musicians wouldn’t dare. She’s been called ‘an artist who shoots straight for the heart and never misses’, and tonight the LSO’s Artistic Associate conducts a concert charged with wonder. PROGRAM Mahler: Symphony No. 4; Messiaen: L’ascension
LSO: Jonathan Stockhammer conducts Adams, Debussy & Ravel
Sunrises, seascapes and blue Californian skies: it’s all about colour as the LSO presents 20th-century favourites by Ravel, Debussy and John Adams. Dawn breaks in paradise, and in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé you can hear every flurry of birdsong and glint of dew. Debussy gazes at the English Channel, and hears new worlds of sonic colour. And in 1980s San Francisco, John Adams imagines a supertanker rising from the sea and rocketing into the shining Pacific sky. PROGRAM Adams: Harmonielehre; Debussy: La mer; Ravel: Daphnis and Chloé – Suite No 2
LSO: Sir Simon Rattle conducts Messiaen
Sir Simon Rattle ends his final Barbican concert as LSO Music Director with Messiaen’s mind-blowing Turangalîla-Symphonie – an explosion of passionate emotion and ear-tingling sound.Imagine a starburst of love on a cosmic scale. Now add a colossal orchestra, an unstoppable pianist and a vintage electronic instrument straight out of science fiction, and you’re still not even half-way to imagining Messiaen’s mind-boggling Turangalîla-Symphonie. Betsy Jolas’ music is more understated – but it still packs a tremendous emotional punch. So what happier way for Sir Simon Rattle to bring down the curtain on his years as Music Director of the LSO, before he takes up the role of Conductor Emeritus? He’s joined by two of his oldest musical friends – pianist Peter Donohoe and ondes-martenot player Cynthia Millar – who also happen to be two of Messiaen’s supreme living interpreters. And with a new work from Betsy Jolas, he’s going out as he came in, with one eye fixed confidently on the future.
LSO: Michael Tilson Thomas conducts Brahms
“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: 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.