About this playlist
This playlist is updated monthly so you can choose your concerts for the following month!
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JS Bach hovers over an enticing programme from Australia’s premiere ensemble, embracing Gubaidulina’s sinewy tribute, and Shostakovich’s riveting Chamber Symphony.
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A nervous system reset features a new work by multi-faceted artist Nabihah Iqbal, her first classical commission for string quartet and electronics.
Rachmaninov’s world was turned completely upside down by the Great War. Severed from his roots, he fled Russia and began a career as a globetrotting pianist. His devilish set of variations, performed here by Bruce Liu – winner of the 2021 International Chopin Competition – embodies this nomadic life: written in Switzerland, premiered in America, based on a tune by Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini and infused with Rachmaninov’s own Russian style. Composers Erich Korngold and Béla Bartók were also forced by politics to leave their homes: both fled from fascism to the New World, and Korngold’s swashbuckling film score is practically a hymn to freedom. Bartók’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra, meanwhile, is more than just a multi-coloured showcase, it’s a struggle between darkness and light, crowned by a mighty shout of joy.
‘Music is life’, declared Carl Nielsen, ‘and like it, inextinguishable!’ Defiant words from a composer who’d seen a world laid waste by war, but they could serve as motto for this concert from the dynamic Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu. In a time of revolution, Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto wove fairytale magic – and no-one makes it dance like our soloist Alina Ibragimova. There’s a vision of cosmic beauty from the late, great Kaija Saariaho. And finally, Nielsen launches a struggle for the future of existence itself: his shattering Fifth Symphony is one of those pieces that simply has to be experienced live.
Please note start time.
Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and actor Mathieu Amalric join forces to celebrate the life and work of Ravel in an intimate portrait via words and music.
The multinational young Kyan Quartet joins the Carduccis as Gubaidulina’s compact Quartet No 2 is stitched into a Shostakovich sequence including the penultimate quartet, with its focus on the cello.
Life finds a way, and even under Soviet repression, composers were testing boundaries and telling forbidden truths. Arvo Pärt drew on the music of the past to liberate explosive new creative forces. Lutosławski reached for all the colours of a full symphony orchestra, and launched glittering sonic fireworks into grey Cold War skies. Eva Ollikainen rediscovers two modern classics, and Colin Currie – in the words of one critic, ‘surely the world’s finest and most daring percussionist’ – explores new ways of listening, with the extraordinary, culture-crossing Water Concerto by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon composer Tan Dun.
Please note venue.
Three French composers rub shoulders in this captivating Sunday afternoon concert.
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Âme creative studio returns to Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room with violist Lawrence Power to transform the space into an immersive multimedia instrument, vibrating with kaleidoscopic video, beautiful music and dynamic sound design.
An evening-long tribute to the limitless creative mind of Pierre Boulez, culminating in a rare performance of his five-movement epic masterpiece Pli selon Pli.
