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: 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
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: 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: 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