Led by its superb chief conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, the London Symphony Orchestra invites a trio of soloists – violist Antoine Tamestit, soprano Julia Sitkovetsky, and bass-baritone Ashley Riches – to join them in an emotional and original program that pairs Tchaikovsky’s sweeping Romanticism with Vaughan Williams’s pastoral grandeur. Opening the program is the Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Two unjustly lesser-heard works by Vaughan Williams follow: first, Tamestit takes the solo role in Flos Campi, inspired by the Song of Solomon and written for the unusual combination of viola, small orchestra, and wordless chorus. Finally, Sitkovetsky, Riches, and the London Symphony Chorus perform the impassioned Dona nobis pacem, a fervent call for peace by a composer who had witnessed the senselessness of violence firsthand as a stretcher bearer in World War I and despaired to see the clouds of war gather anew in 1936. PROGRAM Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 4; Vaughan Williams: Flos Campi, Dona nobis pacem
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.