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 Elgar and Vaughan Williams
At the time of his last symphony, Vaughan Williams had seen the damage of two world wars. The Ninth is a magnificent final statement, balancing dark with warmth, and dread with hope. Reminiscent, ruminating and spiralling: Elgar’s Cello Concerto is unlike his early works and yet remains one of his most popular, from its unforgettable opening gesture, voiced by the cello, to its haunting themes. Bax’s symphonic poem paints Tintagel Castle on a ‘sunny but not windless day’, evoking the characters who once inhabited it.
LSO: Rattle conducts Tippett, Turnage and Vaughan Williams
An all-British programme of Tippett, Turnage and Vaughan Williams inspired by opera and jazz – including an unmissable world premiere, to celebrate Sir Simon Rattle’s 70th birthday. Rattle leads the LSO players across a glorious range of orchestral colours and styles, joined by the legendary John Scofield for a brand new Guitar Concerto. In Rattle’s own words, ‘Who better to be playing this extraordinary British music than the London Symphony Orchestra?’ PROGRAM Tippett: Ritual Dances from Midsummer Marriage; Turnage: Sco – Guitar Concerto (world premiere); Vaughan Williams: Symphony No 5
LSO: Inaugural Concert – Sir Antonio Pappano
Two giants of British music, two blistering orchestral works from the early 20th century, as Sir Antonio Pappano begins his first season as Chief Conductor of the LSO. Elgar’s lyrical Violin Concerto was inscribed with the mysterious phrase, ‘Herein is enshrined the soul of ….’. Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang joins forces with Sir Pappano for “a concerto performance to treasure” (bachtrack). The whole ensemble glows across three emotionally wide-ranging movements – at times tempestuous, at others heartbreakingly tender. Completed in 1917, Holst’s The Planets can still surprise us. From ‘Mars’ – the piece that inspired countless film soundtracks – to the atmospheric fade-out of ‘Neptune’, this is composition on a cosmic scale.
LSO: Nathalie Stutzmann conducts Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9 and Te Deum
The obsessive Anton Bruckner worked on his Ninth Symphony for the last ten years of his life, but the concluding Adagio remained unfinished at his death in 1896. He is said to have suggested that his Te Deum be used in its place – and leaving aside the tonal shift from the D-minor symphony to a C-major hymn, it feels a fitting grand finale for the famously devout composer, who dedicated his last symphony to God. In a concert billed as A Blaze of Glory, the acclaimed Nathalie Stutzmann – who counts Bruckner among her three favorite composers to conduct – leads the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus, joined by soloists Lucy Crowe, Anna Stéphany, Robin Tritschler, and Alexander Tsymbalyuk, in a program that represents no less than the culmination of Bruckner’s life’s work, a mighty and magnificent call to heaven itself.
LSO: Pappano conducts Boulanger, Barber & Rachmaninoff
The sun comes out in Lili Boulanger’s lively tone poem, and lyrical feelings bloom in music by Samuel Barber and Serge Rachmaninoff. D’un matin de printemps is one of the few glimpses we have of Lili Boulanger’s compositional genius, a sparkling miniature that leaves a lasting impression of spring. The emotional sincerity of Samuel Barber’s lyrical Violin Concerto cuts to the heart, its nervy third movement building up to a burst of feeling. And passion reigns in Rachmaninoff’s opulent Second Symphony. Its third movement contains some of the most beautiful music he ever wrote. PROGRAM Boulanger: D’un Matin de printemps; Barber: Violin Concerto; Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2
LSO: Rattle conducts Brahms and Shostakovich
It begins with the engines of industry: mechanical marches, pounding brass. An uneasy second movement, and then a nightmarish vision of life in Stalin’s Russia explodes in a frenzied succession of dance themes. Shostakovich withdrew his Fourth Symphony before its first performance, after hints that he was treading a fine line with the Soviet authorities. It shines on as an extraordinary vision of thwarted humanity. Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto with, and for, his friend, the virtuosic Hungarian musician Joseph Joachim, and its foot-stomping finale honours Joachim’s heritage. PROGRAM Brahms: Violin Concerto; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
LSO: Pappano conducts Ravel, Say & Rachmaninoff
A Dance to the Music of Time – Ravel, Say and Rachmaninoff. Spellbinding storytellers, dancing ghosts and melodies that will stay with you forever.The fairy-tale heroine Scheherazade must keep her audience entertained on pain of death in the One Thousand and One Nights. In Fazil Say’s concerto, the violin plays the part of the endlessly fascinating tale-teller. The piece is paired with impassioned music originally written for the ballet: Ravel’s haunting waltz and Rachmaninoff’s mysterious Symphonic Dances. Ravel imagined whirling couples in a Viennese concert hall in music that seems haunted by World War I. Rachmaninoff also conjures up a ghostly waltz, amid the expressive melodies of the last music he ever wrote. PROGRAM Ravel: La valse; Fazil Say: Violin Concerto (1001 Nights in the Harem); Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances
LSO: Roth conducts Saint-Saens & Beethoven
Every revolution has its roots. The two explosive chords that open Beethoven’s Eroica symphony shook classical music to its foundations. For François-Xavier Roth, though, no artist operates in a vacuum, and tonight he places Beethoven’s era-defining masterpiece alongside the strikingly original music of one of his contemporaries from revolutionary France: François-Joseph Gossec. It’s a fascinating rediscovery – exactly what we’ve come to expect from a conductor as adventurous as Roth. Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto, on the other hand, needs no introduction: In the hands of the ‘simply formidable’ (The Guardian) Bertrand Chamayou, it’ll fizz like champagne. PROGRAM Gossec: Symphonie à 17 parties; Saint-Saëns: Piano Concerto No 2; Beethoven Symphony No 3 “Eroica”
LSO: Harding conducts Dvorak and Widmann
Voices of nature and fabulous tales: Daniel Harding and viola player Antoine Tamestit explore the imaginary realms of Jörg Widmann and Antonin Dvorák. With the music of Antonín Dvorák, there’s always something unexpected going on beneath the gloriously tuneful surface. A gothic Czech folk-tale takes on a truly universal resonance; and an open-hearted celebration of the Bohemian countryside blossoms into something rapturous, in colors reminiscent of Strauss or Mahler. And since Dvorák was a viola player, what better way to set the mood than with the Viola Concerto by Jörg Widmann – the 21st century’s most playful (and inventive) descendant of that great Romantic tradition? ‘Even with the viola’s C-string alone, you can tell stories unimaginable on any other string instrument’, he says, and he wrote this piece, especially for Antoine Tamestit. Music that dreams and then dazzles, performed by artists who just love the sound it makes. Program: Widmann: Viola Concerto; Dvorák: In der Natur, The Golden Spinning Wheel