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 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.
LSO: Gardiner conducts Mozart & Tchaikovsky
Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts Symphony No 2 from the great Tchaikovsky and incidental music from Schubert’s Rosamunde. He is joined on stage by Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires who performs Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 27. PROGRAM Schubert: Entr’acte Nos. 2 & 3 from ‘Rosamunde’; Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27: Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 ‘Little Russian’
LSO: Rattle conducts Sibelius & Bruckner
Sir Simon Rattle conducts music in which vast landscapes merge with the human soul: Sibelius’ tone poems and Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony. Bruckner said that the beginning of his Seventh Symphony came to him in a dream, played by an angel. This huge, glowing mountain-range of sound is basically soul music by any other name. Far away in Finland, meanwhile, Sibelius was thinking big too. Whether it’s the sun dancing on the Mediterranean sea, or the forests of the far north, you can practically feel the freshness in the air. Sir Simon Rattle has been conducting Sibelius since he was a teenager, making him an unrivalled guide through this untamed musical landscape. PROGRAM Sibelius: The Oceanides, Tapiola; Bruckner: Symphony No. 7
LSO: Nathalie Stutzmann conducts Brahms & Beethoven
Nathalie Stutzmann dives deep into the dark heart of 19th century music, with storm-swept thrillers by Beethoven, Brahms and Franck. The stars shine most brightly when the night is at its darkest. Brahms stares tragedy in the face in his final symphony: music that wrestles beauty and hope from a lifetime of sorrow. Beethoven finds poetry among the shadows, in his moody Third Piano Concerto. And César Franck gallops through the night in a wild, supernatural sonic thriller. We’re going to hell and back – hold on tight! Nathalie Stutzmann’s concerts with the LSO always bring out the drama and emotion of romantic music, repertoire that she lives and breathes. In her own words, to inspire people, “you have to be the incarnation of the music you have in your heart.” PROGRAM Franck: Le chasseur maudit; Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3; Brahms: Symphony No. 4
LSO: Rattle conducts Folk Roots, Urban Roots
Jubilent Eastern European folk music, swinging Latin American rhythms and toe-tapping jazz are brought together in an ambitious programme featuring the legendary Labeque Sisters under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle. PROGRAM Bartok: Hungarian Peasant Songs; Szymanowski: Harnasie; Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto; Golijov: Nazareno; Bernstein: Prelude, Fugue and Riff
LSO: Gergiev conducts Brahms: German Requiem
Conductor Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra present Johannes Brahms’ greatest choral work, the German Requiem, featuring soprano Sally Matthews and baritone Christopher Maltman. PROGRAM Brahms: German Requiem