Bringing together Walton’s turbulent first Symphony with passionate statements of love and outrage from two American greats.
Keywords: Symphony Concert, Young Musicians
| London Symphony Orchestra | |
| Sir Antonio Pappano | Conductor |
| Janine Jansen | Violin |
| George Walker | Sinfonia No 5, Visions |
| Leonard Bernstein | Serenade |
| William Walton | Symphony No 1 |
These events are similar in terms of concept, place, musicians or the program.
Evocative portraits of night and the sea in an all-British programme: enigmatic Maconchy, meditative Walton, and awe-inspiring Vaughan Williams.
Dreams and fantasies from enigmatic Szymanowski to Berlioz’s most rock’n’roll work, the Symphonie fantastique.
Two reflective works from Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar, plus Arnold Bax’s evocative portrait of the Cornish countryside.
Tippet's moving pacifist oratorio meets Beethoven’s immense Choral Symphony.
Two portraits from a magician of orchestral colour, Richard Strauss – plus a young Mozart dances on the violin
Sir Antonio Pappano conducts a concert performance of Strauss’ scandalous opera Salome, with the brilliant soprano Asmik Grigorian in the title role.
Sir Antonio Pappano conducts a concert performance of Strauss’ scandalous opera Salome, with the brilliant soprano Asmik Grigorian in the title role.
With the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano, global champions of the classical music scene come together at the Hamburg International Music Festival. The LSO stands out in the exuberant music scene of the UK’s capital city as an orchestra with international claim to leadership and has in Pappano a principal conductor whose global career seeks peers. In their programme, the musical power couple combines two French composers, who fearlessly pushed boundaries in their respective time: Hector Berlioz and Pierre Boulez. Hector Berlioz had a soft spot for programmatic music. He loved staging stories with the powerful sound of a large orchestra. This is how his concert overture »Le corsaire«, after the book of the same name, The Corsair, by Lord Byron, enthrallingly recounts a wild pirate on a stormy sea. And Berlioz’s legendary »Symphonie fantastique« sends a young musician in love from his first happy infatuation via a rousing ball into an ecstatic hell-ride to the Last Judgment – had Berlioz lived later, he might have become an inspired film music composer. The romantic extroversion of Berlioz frames a programme of contrasts: two works for ensemble by Pierre Boulez, which plunge into intimate soundscapes. In »Livre pour cordes« (Book for Strings) for string orchestra and »Mémoriale« (Memorial) for solo flute and ensemble, Boulez spins delicate threads of sound through the musical space of possibilities and, full of relish, invites you to hear around the corner.
Three very different musical characters meet in this British visit: a young Frenchwoman, an American classic and Sergei Rachmaninov, the »last Romantic« in music history. What an opportunity for the new chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra Sir Antonio Pappano and the Dutch violinist Janine Jansen to exhibit their versatility! Imagine what might have become of Lili Boulanger, who composed »Of a Spring Morning« in 1918 at the age of 25? She sadly died soon thereafter so we will never know. But one thing is certain: she was one of the greatest talents of her generation. One man who did make the leap from promising hopeful to one of his country’s leading composers was Samuel Barber, whose Violin Concerto, Op. 14, premiered in 1941, enjoys enduring popularity. Speaking of popularity: Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony is in a league of its own. The third movement of the work, which was premiered in Saint Petersburg in 1908, has melted the hearts of generations of concertgoers.
Star trumpeter Alison Balsom deliberately reduced her concert workload in recent years in order to concentrate on the projects close to her heart. So it was a stroke of luck that the British musician couldn’t say no when one of today’s top orchestras asked her if she would play the solo part in the trumpet concerto that Wynton Marsalis composed in 2022. The American Wynton Marsalis is one of the few artists to make a name for himself both in jazz and in classical music as a top trumpeter, not to mention his commitment to jazz in the cultural world and his support for the rights of African American musicians. After the interval, the London Symphony Orchestra transplants us to Britain with the Fifth Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams: written in the dark war years up to 1943, this is a score of truly luminous beauty.
Concert Pulse