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116 events match your criteria
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| Date | Event | Composers, Works, Performers |
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| Wednesday 22-Sep-10 07:30pm |
 Royal Festival Hall, LondonZemlinksy and Mahler |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 22-Sep-10 07:30pm Zemlinksy and Mahler | ||
| Saturday 25-Sep-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Haydn, D'Amico, Dufay and Bartók |
D'Amico, Flight from Byzantium (World Premiere) |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 25-Sep-10 07:30pm Haydn, D'Amico, Dufay and Bartók 1918, and Béla Bartók encountered the legend of a young girl, forced by three thugs to lure men from the street into their den. When she encounters a magical Mandarin, a wild pursuit ensues before she embraces him and he dies. The story drew from Bartók his most astonishing orchestral creation, a piece that thrusts life into the manic tumult of the chase as the orchestra screws itself towards breaking point before plunging into its final catastrophic chords. Matteo D’Amico’s view of the flight of civilisation from ancient Istanbul receives its world première at this concert – a piece for speaker, vocal ensemble and orchestra whose sudden journeying offers a provocative counterpoint to Bartók’s. D'Amico, Matteo (b. 1955), Flight from Byzantium (World Premiere) | ||
| Sunday 26-Sep-10 04:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Tristan und Isolde |
Philharmonia Orchestra Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Gary Lehman, Tenor: Tristan Christine Brewer, Soprano: Isolde Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-soprano: Brangäne John Relyea, Bass: King Marke Jukka Rasilainen, Baritone: Kurwenal Stephen Gadd, Baritone: Melot Andrew Kennedy, Tenor Philharmonia Voices |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 26-Sep-10 04:00pm Tristan und Isolde Please note running time of five hours including two intervals In one of the most passionate love stories ever told, Tristan and Isolde's lives are set on a path to tragedy by the simple replacement of poison for a love potion. Yet this tragedy also results in their all-encompassing love for each other, and the intensity of their passion is expressed through Wagner's sumptuous chromaticism and lush orchestral colours. The opera is one of the peaks of the operatic repertory, and the climax of Isolde's 'Liebestod' is one of the most moving and all-embracing musical moments ever written. Please note that due to video scenes with nudity this performance is not recommended for under-14s. Philharmonia Orchestra Esa-Pekka Salonen, Conductor Gary Lehman, Tenor: Tristan Christine Brewer, Soprano: Isolde Anne Sofie von Otter, Mezzo-soprano: Brangäne John Relyea, Bass: King Marke Jukka Rasilainen, Baritone: Kurwenal Stephen Gadd, Baritone: Melot Andrew Kennedy, Tenor Philharmonia Voices | ||
| Thursday 30-Sep-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 30-Sep-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the music of his compatriot Jean Sibelius in this concert. Sibelius’s tone poem Finlandia sets the soundworld with its nationalistic evocations of scenes from Finnish history; followed by Lemminkäinen, an orchestral suite based on the Finnish national epic poem, the Kalevala. The most famous movement describes The Swan of Tuonela with the cor anglais’ melody gliding over the musical water of the strings and woodwind; the other movements are equally evocative and atmospheric, moving from the ‘Land of the Dead’ to the hero’s exploits in battle. Between these, Brahms’ First Piano Concerto provides a flamboyant display of pianistic virtuosity. | ||
| Friday 1-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Philharmonic Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 1-Oct-10 07:30pm London Philharmonic Orchestra As the 20th century loomed, Paris seized control of Western music's future. Even the conservative Saint-Saens began to suggest teh exotic in his highly stylised piano concertos, while also quoting a serene melody by his elegant pupil Faure in the Second. But no Parisian was quite prepared for Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which unleased a total reappraisal of both dance and music, replacing foot-led ballet with pelvic-born ritual dance and favouring the pounding, jagged rhythms of the earth over traditional principles of harmony. | ||
| Tuesday 5-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London International Piano Series 10 - 11 |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 5-Oct-10 07:30pm International Piano Series 10 - 11 | ||
| Wednesday 6-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Suk, Chopin and Dvořák |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 6-Oct-10 07:30pm Suk, Chopin and Dvořák So much great music is born of longing to be somewhere else. With the easy elegance and pruned sophistication of his Second Piano Concerto, Chopin hoped to endear himself to the opinion-forming concertgoers of Paris, 850 miles from his home in Warsaw. Antonín Dvořák had already hit the big-time when he wrote his New World Symphony. But parachuted into America to run New York’s fledgling music college, the composer felt himself longing for home: the Symphony’s spirituals and plantation songs – its shapely and contented melodies – are tinged with a slight Slavic sadness. | ||
| Thursday 7-Oct-10 07:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 7-Oct-10 07:00pm Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment | ||
| Thursday 7-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London A Night at the Opera |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 7-Oct-10 07:30pm A Night at the Opera Griff Rhys Jones hosts an evening of operatic hits in aid of The Passage-helping homeless people for 30 years | ||
| Saturday 9-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Dvořák |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 9-Oct-10 07:30pm Dvořák Dvořák so often found words a hindrance rather than a help when tasked with setting them to music. But how could he be anything but inspired by the touching text depicting the weeping mother of Christ at the foot of the cross, the Stabat Mater? It certainly stirred something in Dvořák: melodies of fresh-minted beauty flow forth, the composer revels in intimacy and grandeur, poeticism and reverence. But before the solemnity of Dvořák’s first choral utterance, we hear the joyous outburst of his last: the blazing open-air Te Deum, a work of ear-bending strength and conviction; a true masterpiece in miniature. | ||
| Sunday 10-Oct-10 03:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 10-Oct-10 03:00pm Philharmonia Orchestra Dancing tunes and jumping rhythms abound in this afternoon’s programme. Stravinsky’s music to The Firebird glitters with magical colours describing the fairytale of the magic bird and the heroic prince; meanwhile Rachmaninov takes one of Paganini’s most famous tunes and transforms it in every way imaginable, through dazzling displays of pianistic virtuosity to Variation 18 that swells in the epitome of Romanticism. Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s promenade through an art gallery, with its evocative descriptions of the paintings therein, completes the programme. | ||
| Tuesday 12-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 12-Oct-10 07:30pm Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela | ||
| Wednesday 13-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Magnus Lindberg, Mendelssohn and Walton |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 13-Oct-10 07:30pm Magnus Lindberg, Mendelssohn and Walton Walton’s First Symphony is a massively structured epic; a work of broad Romantic sweep and struggle; a canvas that places Sibelius-like grandeur and high-voltage electricity alongside the infectious syncopations of jazz. If Mendelssohn’s perfected and instantly heart-string-tugging Violin Concerto felt like God’s gift to violinists, Walton’s Symphony appeared the same to English symphony orchestras, hungry for a successor to Elgar’s masterpieces that would at last wrestle the symphonic crown from the European mainland. | ||
| Thursday 14-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 14-Oct-10 07:30pm Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela | ||
| Friday 15-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Philharmonic Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 15-Oct-10 07:30pm London Philharmonic Orchestra How life changes us. In his late Cello Concerto, Edward Elgar shed the swaggering Edwardian confidence of his youth in favour of more inward, thoughtful expressions. The Concerto's elegiac themes shun excess but speak as loudly as the luscious rollercoaster that is Richard Strauss's orchestral autobiography, Ein Heldenleben. No sign of restraint here. But like Elgar, Strauss did change, and he depicted as much in the music: it starts heroic and exhibitionistic, scattering adversaries with panache. It finishes in a place of peace, fulfilled and contented, suddenly as disarmingly noble as Elgar's Cello Concerto. | ||
| Sunday 17-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Mozart's Requiem |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 17-Oct-10 07:30pm Mozart's Requiem | ||
| Tuesday 19-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London International Piano Series 10 - 11 |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 19-Oct-10 07:30pm International Piano Series 10 - 11 | ||
| Thursday 21-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 21-Oct-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is one of the pinnacles of the Russian symphonic tradition, a tradition that places high emphasis on flowing melodies and powerful orchestration. From the brooding first movement through the rhythmically exciting Scherzo (once again containing the Dies Irae motif that haunts so many of the composer’s works) to the beautiful climax of the slow movement, and then their summation in the final movement, the work is a real journey through the Russian musical landscape and the world of Rachmaninov’s imagination. | ||
| Saturday 23-Oct-10 07:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Rossini - in concert |
London Philharmonic Orchestra Maurizio Benini, Conductor Annick Massis, Soprano: Zenobia Silvia Tro Santafé, Soprano: Arsace Kenneth Tarver, Tenor: Aureliano Andrew Foster-Williams, Bass: Gran Sacerdote Ezgi Kutlu, Mezzo-soprano: Publia Geoffrey Mitchell Choir |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 23-Oct-10 07:00pm Rossini - in concert Concert performance given in association with Opera Rara. Sung in Italian with English surtitles. This performance will last approximately 2 hours 45 minutes including interval. In his day, Gioacchino Rossini was simply a superstar: a crowd-pleaser and a cultural pivot. In the opera house he formed the bridge from Classicism to Romanticism; in wider society he linked revolution against monarchy to liberalism and autocracy. Aureliano in Palmira is both unique and fascinating: a moment of distinct elegance and poise in the career of an out-and-out entertainer. From his stirring, heroic subject matter Rossini creates a lightly-scored, charming and sensitive piece; male heroism is meted out in one instance by a noble horn obbligato; female defiance by consistently attractive but controlled coloratura. When the voices of Arsace and Zenobia combine, they do so to form, for the 19th-century French commentator Henri Beyle, the ‘finest duet Rossini has ever written.’ London Philharmonic Orchestra Maurizio Benini, Conductor Annick Massis, Soprano: Zenobia Silvia Tro Santafé, Soprano: Arsace Kenneth Tarver, Tenor: Aureliano Andrew Foster-Williams, Bass: Gran Sacerdote Ezgi Kutlu, Mezzo-soprano: Publia Geoffrey Mitchell Choir | ||
| Sunday 24-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Sinfonietta |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 24-Oct-10 07:30pm London Sinfonietta | ||
| Wednesday 27-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Mendelssohn, Mahler and Brahms |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 27-Oct-10 07:30pm Mendelssohn, Mahler and Brahms Mahler came to set Friedrich Rückert’s poems ‘on the deaths of children’ in 1901, six years before his own daughter would die from the same disease as Rückert’s two children had. And the songs themselves seem an uncanny premonition: emotionally dumbfounded, frantically grief-stricken, touchingly affectionate but glowingly consolatory. Where words fail, this music speaks through gentle orchestration and a disarmingly honest voice; a haven of sleep amid the thrusting and cutting orchestral statements of Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony and the provocative fist-shaking of Brahms’s Third Symphony. | ||
| Thursday 28-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 28-Oct-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Rachmaninov's powerful Third Symphony was composed some thrity years after its predecessor. It is often said to be his most expressively Russian symphony, especially in the dance rhythms of its finale. The traditional Dies Irae melody, the hallmark of so much of Rachmaninov's output, features once again, and also appears in the mysterious Isle of the Dead. Sibelius' ever-popular Violin Concerto completes the programme, and its polonaise finale adds a moment of levity to the occasion. | ||
| Saturday 30-Oct-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Brahms and Beethoven |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 30-Oct-10 07:30pm Brahms and Beethoven Decades after Beethoven’s death he was still the most important artist around. Brahms behaved like Beethoven was watching over his shoulder and created symphonies and symphony-like concertos in which the scale and declamation of Beethoven’s ‘Heroic’ Third Symphony could be readily detected. The second of Brahms’s Piano Concertos was the biggest since Beethoven’s Emperor – a piece marked out by maturity and skill but itself displaying heroism, virtuosity and Romantic depth. Mahler acted purely on artistic conviction when he ‘re-touched’ Beethoven’s Symphony; instruments, concert halls and audiences had changed, and Mahler invested Beethoven’s minute detail with the strength – in 1890s Vienna – to enter everyone’s ears. | ||
| Thursday 4-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 4-Nov-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Composed largely under the influence of opium, the 27 year old Berlioz’s extraordinary dramatisation of his own obsession with Harriet Smithson remains one of the most thrilling and troubling masterpieces of the nineteenth century. Using the concept of an “idée fixe” – a musical motif that recurs throughout the piece – Berlioz plots what he described as the “rage… fury… delirium which takes possession of all one’s faculties, which renders one capable of anything” – concluding ultimately in the death of his hero, executed for his lover’s murder. Mozart’s Don Giovanni fairs little better for his philandering, dragged to hell by the ghost of a man that he murdered; but in between, his Sinfonia Concertante offers a genuinely romantic interlude, together with one of the most exquisite melodies ever written. | ||
| Sunday 7-Nov-10 03:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 7-Nov-10 03:00pm Philharmonia Orchestra A very special afternoon and the first ever opportunity to hear the original film score of one of the most well-loved and celebrated MGM musicals of all time in concert. Well known to audiences from his BBC Proms triumph in 2009, John Wilson has lovingly reconstructed the score of Singin’ in the Rain, and has joined forces once again with Kim Criswell to bring it to life on the Royal Festival Hall concert platform. Kim Criswell both narrates and plays the part of Lina Lamont in a story that has been described as the autobiography of Hollywood itself at the end of the silent movie era. The dashing, smug but romantic silent film star and swashbuckling matinee idol (Don Lockwood) and his glamorous blonde screen partner/diva (Lina Lamont) are expected, by studio heads, to pretend to be romantically involved with each other. They are also under pressure to make their first “talkie”, but Lina has a shrill, screechy voice, and cannot sing, so when the film is re-cast as a musical, a plot is hatched for Don’s ingénue girlfriend Kathy Selden to dub in the singing parts. Please note, this is a concert performance of Singin' in the Rain not a live film screening. | ||
| Thursday 11-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 11-Nov-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Dedicated to Tchaikovsky’s friend and close confidant Madame von Meck, the composer wrote in a letter to her that she would find in the Fourth Symphony “an echo of your most intimate thoughts and emotions”. The opening fanfare motif represented to Tchaikovsky ‘Fate’ preventing him from attaining happiness: a comment made all the more poignant when we realise he composed the work in the aftermath of his catastrophic marriage. Yet the finale is an exciting charge towards the finish line, its enthusiasm and boundless energy outweighing the work’s earlier bleakness. | ||
| Wednesday 17-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Strauss, Mahler and Ravel |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 17-Nov-10 07:30pm Strauss, Mahler and Ravel A sense of withdrawal from the world – a mood of nostalgia and nobility established by the great late-Romantic song-writer Richard Strauss – seems to arrive in Mahler’s setting for voice and orchestra of five poems by Friedrich Rückert. ‘I am dead to the world’s commotion and at peace in a still land’, sings Mahler’s soprano over a delicate harp-seasoned orchestra. In Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé suites there are some of the most startling orchestral effects ever conceived, and yet still, a very individual sense of nostalgia: in Ravel’s swirling surges, glowing textures and excitable orchestral rallyings is a delicate, naive innocence from a man whose childhood was a paradise lost. | ||
| Tuesday 23-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London International Piano Series 10 - 11 |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 23-Nov-10 07:30pm International Piano Series 10 - 11 | ||
| Wednesday 24-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Stravinksy, Prokofiev and Shostakovich |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 24-Nov-10 07:30pm Stravinksy, Prokofiev and Shostakovich At the height of his cinematic powers, Dmitri Shostakovich created one of his most vivid and pictorial symphonies. At its core the Eleventh depicts the massacre in 1905 of a group of peaceful demonstrators in St Petersburg by the Tzar’s guard. The intense, filmic realism of Shostakovich’s orchestral world is uncanny: snare drums incite panic in the strings before the orchestra lurches towards massacre with brass yelps and percussion crashes. And yet in spite of its darkness, there’s hardly anything more engaging or colourful in Shostakovich’s oeuvre. He might be known for his wry wit, but in this concert Shostakovich leaves that to his compatriot Prokofiev. | ||
| Thursday 25-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 25-Nov-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra The famous theme of the opening movement of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is reputed to be based on a melody overheard by the composer performed by beggars at a market in Kiev. Although only heard twice in the piece, it ties the rest of the themes together with a strong motivic link; other Ukrainian folk songs and even a French chanson also appear. Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony is equally infused with nationalistic flavour, but there the resemblance ends; Shostakovich was under pressure from the political regime to compose a work in line with their guidelines and so although on the surface the work is heroic and abounding in ‘singable’ melodies, the composer’s underlying feelings can still be heard. | ||
| Friday 26-Nov-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Philharmonic Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 26-Nov-10 07:30pm London Philharmonic Orchestra For the last two years of his life, Anton Bruckner laboured over the final movement of his Ninth Symphony. He never finished it. The flame of his existence was extinguished even as he leant over the symphony's incomplete score. But as life was leaving Bruckner, vision and faith were only strengthening in him. The performing version of the Ninth Symphony played today has inspiring optimism and boldness. Instruments glide confidently towards unusual and pleasing harmonies and keys before intoning a chorale taken from Bruckner's own setting of the sacred Te Deum text. 'Art had its beginning in God', believed Bruckner, 'And so it must lead back to God.' | ||
| Wednesday 1-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Debussy (orch. C. Matthews), Britten and Mahler |
Debussy, Des pas sur la neige (Preludes, Bk.1 no.6) (orch. C Matthews) Debussy, La Cathedrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) (orch. C Matthews) Debussy, Préludes, Bk 2 no.12: Feux d'artifice (orch. C Matthews) |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 1-Dec-10 07:30pm Debussy (orch. C. Matthews), Britten and Mahler After the cataclysmic natural conflicts of his Third Symphony, Mahler glanced elsewhere in the more contented, downsized pastoral of his Fourth. Within the delicate frame of this piece is some of the composer’s most heart-easing music; the spectres of Mozart and Beethoven peer through its clean dances and calming lullabies. Clouds gather, only to be gently breathed away by the soprano’s song of Heavenly Life and the harp’s contented thrumming. Following the taut, spring-like exhilarations of Britten’s orchestral songs Les Illuminations, Mahler’s reposeful symphony will glow even warmer. Debussy, Claude (1862-1918), Des pas sur la neige (Preludes, Bk.1 no.6) (orch. C Matthews) Debussy, Claude (1862-1918), La Cathedrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) (orch. C Matthews) Debussy, Claude (1862-1918), Préludes, Bk 2 no.12: Feux d'artifice (orch. C Matthews) | ||
| Thursday 2-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 2-Dec-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Like his friend and protégé Brahms, Schumann delayed writing his first symphony for many years, too in awe of Beethoven to imagine composing in the same form. But in 1841, after discovering Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, he took courage, and composed the Spring symphony, an exuberant work that remains one of his most popular. In this evening’s concert it is paired with Brahms’s own great Violin Concerto, written almost 40 years later, and the overture to Weber’s most well-loved opera, Der Freischütz. | ||
| Saturday 4-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Beethoven and Mahler |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 4-Dec-10 07:30pm Beethoven and Mahler Mahler’s First Symphony: the opening chapter of his spiritual autobiography. And the music itself seems to awaken – emerging from hushed strings and woodwind cuckoos into its stride, marching forth, stamping towards an eerie realisation of a nursery rhyme and arriving at a final, blazing affirmation of confidence. Here Vladimir Jurowski includes additional, cleansing musical statements: Beethoven’s ‘taming the furies’ Fourth Piano Concerto, and the movement of the First Symphony that Mahler’s publisher discarded, Blumine – a pure and touching statement shot through with Mahler’s own inimitable sense of resignation and regret. | ||
| Sunday 5-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 5-Dec-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra This evening’s concert is framed by two symphonies, written within fifteen years of each other and both pioneering in their testing of the classical symphony structure. Although Schubert’s Eighth Symphony was unfinished, it has become one of his most popular works, notable for its drawn-out, profound opening and alternating moods of melancholy and drama. The 'Fate knocking at the door' opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is even better known; it is a testimony to this most revolutionary of works that it still sounds fresh and exciting to the listener, more than 200 years after ETA Hoffmann declared it to be 'one of the most important works of the time'. | ||
| Tuesday 7-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 7-Dec-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra The 35 year old Richard Strauss caused a sensation with his tone poem 'A Hero’s Tale' when it was premièred in 1898, shocking musicians and critics with what was assumed to be an egotistical display of musical autobiography. Since then opinion has been divided between those who take the work at its face value and those who see it as an ironic statement of musical bombast. But few disagree that it is an extraordinary achievement, rich with flamboyance, colour and pictorial drama, and that the Hero – whoever he may be – is brought vividly and dramatically to life. In this evening’s performance it is paired with a different sort of heroic virtuosity, when the extraordinary Håkan Hardenberger performs Haydn’s glorious Trumpet Concerto. | ||
| Saturday 11-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Messiah by Candlelight |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 11-Dec-10 07:30pm Messiah by Candlelight | ||
| Sunday 12-Dec-10 03:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 12-Dec-10 03:00pm Philharmonia Orchestra A festive programme brings the Philharmonia to the Christmas season, with the sleigh ride in Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije setting the scene for a programme of wintery cheer. Mendelssohn’s soaring Violin Concerto provides a moment of respite in the middle of the hustle and bustle before Tchaikovsky’s seasonal ballet music to The Nutcracker completes the programme. Telling an enchanting story of a little girl whose Christmas gifts come to life, this is a firm favourite of young and old alike. | ||
| Tuesday 14-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 14-Dec-10 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Holst wrote his most famous orchestral suite, The Planets, after being introduced by a friend to astrology. Each planet is characterised musically; Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity is said to have inspired two cleaning ladies at its first performance to throw down their mops and dance, although in later years it has come to be more closely associated with patriotism, after being re-written as the hymn tune I Vow To Thee My Country. In this evening’s all-English programme it is paired with Elgar’s great elegy for the loss of the England he loved, his Cello Concerto, and Vaughan Williams’s Wasps Overture, part of his incidental music written to accompany Aristophanes’ play of the same name. | ||
| Wednesday 15-Dec-10 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Beethoven, Martinů, Julian Anderson and Nielsen |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 15-Dec-10 07:30pm Beethoven, Martinů, Julian Anderson and Nielsen This is the first chance this season to hear a work by the Orchestra’s new Composer in Residence Julian Anderson. Also comes music that lives no less: there’s a tinge of magic to Martinů’s Second Violin Concerto, filled with endearing harmonic flicks and flounces as it forages restlessly through a jungle of orchestral effects. And what is it about Fifth Symphonies? Beethoven’s, Shostakovich’s, Sibelius’s – they appear invested with an extra profundity. They seem to reach out from their neighbours. Nielsen’s Fifth is no different. An epic struggle between darkness and light, minor and major, violence and humanity; the lone voice of the snare drum silenced eventually by a surging, searing orchestra. | ||
| Friday 14-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Philharmonic Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 14-Jan-11 07:30pm London Philharmonic Orchestra And then it all changed. At the dawn of 2011 we come to Mahler's turning point: the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. Gone are the jaunty folk tunes that dominate the first four symphonies; in their place is a thrusting rhythm, a demonic drive and an argumentative edge - all heard through an enlarged, empowered orchestra. The Sixth is compelling and overwhelming: a full-on charge towards a face-off with fate, represented by three infamous hammer blows in the orchestra's percussion. Mahler wrings himself out. The optimism, luxury and gleam of Szymanowski's kaleidoscopic Violin Concerto will feel like a distant memory. | ||
| Sunday 16-Jan-11 07:00pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Budapest Festival Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Sunday 16-Jan-11 07:00pm Budapest Festival Orchestra | ||
| Monday 17-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Monday 17-Jan-11 07:30pm Royal Philharmonic Orchestra | ||
| Tuesday 18-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London London Sinfonietta |
Works by Furrer |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 18-Jan-11 07:30pm London Sinfonietta Works by Furrer, Beat (b. 1954) | ||
| Wednesday 19-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Beethoven and Mahler |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 19-Jan-11 07:30pm Beethoven and Mahler Where the darkness of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (performed on 14 January) seems to end with a resounding ‘No’, its predecessor retains its fighting spirit from the single trumpet fanfare of its opening moments to the cock-a-hoop orchestral flourish of its closing ones. In between is an epic tussle between mourning and rapture. The music is assured, sweeping, changeable and hair-raising. Mahler had come of age. And if his trumpet heralds a new orchestral style, then Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto wrapped up history’s most remarkable cycle of concertos with suitably explosive and emotive power. | ||
| Friday 21-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 21-Jan-11 07:30pm Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment | ||
| Saturday 22-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Franck and Fauré |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Saturday 22-Jan-11 07:30pm Franck and Fauré After the fire and brimstone of settings by Mozart and Verdi, the contemplative, restful Requiem by Gabriel Fauré seemed to propose a new religious philosophy. Fauré’s work is at its most powerful when at its most calm and reassuring; its clean lines, pure vocal textures and elegant orchestrations feel characteristically French in their understatement. But César Frank created very French music, too, albeit with rather different means. His Symphony in D minor ‘risked a great deal’ in his own words. The expanse of Bruckner, the narrative suggestion of Liszt and the compelling ‘motto’ techniques of Beethoven combined to create Franck’s imposing signature work. | ||
| Wednesday 26-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Eötvös, Liszt and Zemlinksy |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Wednesday 26-Jan-11 07:30pm Eötvös, Liszt and Zemlinksy When Franz Liszt strode onto the concert stage in the middle of the 19th century, he changed it for ever. With Liszt’s thunderous piano concertos the age of the virtuoso was born, a fusion of Beethoven’s single-mindedness and Paganini’s breathtaking virtuosity. The concertos continue to stun with their drama and dexterity today. If Liszt created the modern virtuoso, then Alexander Zemlinsky in early 20th-century Vienna prophesied the language of the movie score. His setting of Hindu poetry by Rabindranath Tagore is an alluring, mysterious and sexy slice of late Romantic lusciousness in which soprano and baritone drape alternate verses over a kaleidoscopic orchestra. A rare chance to hear a brilliantly individual work. | ||
| Thursday 27-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London Philharmonia Orchestra |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Thursday 27-Jan-11 07:30pm Philharmonia Orchestra Esa-Pekka Salonen has chosen to open Infernal Dance with a programme featuring two of Bartók’s most extraordinary works. The choral tone poem Kossuth was Bartók’s first major orchestral work, and a dramatic statement of intent; it celebrates the life of its eponymous hero, one of Hungary’s most vivid national legends. The ballet-pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, profoundly influenced by Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Firebird, is raw, dangerous, exotic and elemental: frenzied music, percussive, sensuous and violent, telling a shocking story of desire and death. This evening’s performance not only features the full ballet score, which is rarely performed, but is semi-staged, using puppetry to recreate the ballet’s strange and disturbing world. | ||
| Friday 28-Jan-11 07:30pm |
Royal Festival Hall, London International Piano Series 10 - 11 |
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| Royal Festival Hall, London, London, United Kingdom Friday 28-Jan-11 07:30pm International Piano Series 10 - 11 | ||
