Name: Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays Shostakovich
Start: 2024-10-04T19:30:00
Location: Royal Festival Hall

London is set to be a hub of musical brilliance as various renowned venues play host to an array of captivating events celebrating the works of Benjamin Britten. From the enchanting 'Fairy-Tale Dances' performed by Lawrence Power and Thomas Adès at the Southbank Centre to the moving 'War Requiem' by The Bach Choir at Westminster Cathedral, music lovers will be treated to a series of unforgettable performances. Highlights include the haunting opera 'The Turn of the Screw' at the London Coliseum, the evocative 'Four Sea Interludes' at Cadogan Hall, and an evening of chamber music with IMS Prussia Cove at Wigmore Hall.

Discover Benjamin Britten's Masterpieces in London: A Musical Journey Through Time

London is set to become the epicenter of Shostakovich celebrations, with a series of captivating concerts featuring his iconic works. From the powerful Symphony No. 5 performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall to the emotional Piano Trios by Brahms and Shostakovich at LSO St Luke's, music lovers are in for a treat. The London Philharmonic Orchestra will host a special performance of Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, while the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will bring his Festive Overture to life at Cadogan Hall. Don't miss out on this extraordinary musical journey!

Shostakovich's Legacy Resonates in London: A Series of Unmissable Concerts

Edward Gardner

Patricia Kopatchinskaja

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Deep in a kingdom of shadow rules the green-clawed demon king Kashchey – but young Prince Ivan has a gallant heart, and with the aid of the enchanted Firebird, even the darkest spells can be broken. When Stravinsky composed The Firebird he didn’t just imagine a wondrous fantasy world. He let us hear it, too, and today conductor Dionysis Grammenos and the LPO take you to new realms of sound – from Debussy’s sensuous arcadia to Mendelssohn’s Scottish seascape. Pianist Lukas Sternath, meanwhile, brings all his award-winning artistry to Mozart’s 23rd Piano Concerto. Some say it’s his loveliest.

The Firebird

Brighton Dome

Congress Theatre

Imagine an orchestra as a river. Or a bassoon becoming one with nature, exploring land, water and air. The latest adventure in our Harmony with Nature season begins with a contemporary classic by John Luther Adams. It embraces Terra, Clarice Assad’s Earth-inspired concerto, and it ends amid the changing seasons of Buenos Aires, with a live dance interpretation of Piazzolla’s intimate portrait of the city of tango.

Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

Southbank Centre

Members of Crisis UK – all adults who have experienced homelessness – perform original music they have devised with LPO musicians and a workshop leader during a week-long creative project.

LPO Showcase: Crisis Creates

Every story has to start somewhere, and in this remarkable choral symphony the young Sibelius retells Finland’s most ancient poem, the Kalevala. This is Sibelius in the raw: the tragedy of a young hero and a love more terrible than war, told in music of operatic power. So gather round as Robin Ticciati, a full chorus and two star singers retell the story tonight. Lotta Wennäkoski – one of modern Finland’s most original young voices – has something new to add, too.

Voices from Finland

Beethoven wanted his Ninth Symphony to embrace all humanity, so when Tan Dun set out to compose his own tribute to Beethoven, he aimed just as high, combining ancient poetry from China and Europe to create an ‘ode to peace’ worthy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. His choral concerto Nine is everything you’d expect from the composer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and tonight Tan Dun joins us to conduct the UK premiere – plus a full performance of Beethoven’s world-changing symphony. East meets West, and the result transcends both.

Beethoven’s Ninth

In the dark heart of a continent on the brink of war, a violin catches fire. Three robed priests vent their pain and rage, in molten, tactile paint. And a hut on hen’s legs flies through a fairytale forest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but music can paint pictures that haven’t even been imagined. Tonight, Edward Gardner is the curator of a sonic picture gallery: presenting powerful 20th-century masterpieces by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Bartók alongside Mussorgsky’s multicoloured, hugely popular Pictures at an Exhibition. Let your ears be your eyes, and hear them come to life.

Pictures at an Exhibition

When Beethoven wanted to unwind, he headed for the countryside, and with its birdsong, its mountain streams and its summer storms, there’s still no better example of a composer in harmony with nature than his lovely ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. Add the world’s favourite violin concerto, played by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, and you could hardly ask for more melody in a single concert. But nature is nothing if not dynamic, and Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s CATAMORPHOSIS is charged with all the brooding, volcanic power of her native Iceland.

Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony

To the composers of the Romantic generation, nature was a storybook, where forests, mountains and rivers all echoed the joys and sorrows of the human heart. Antonín Dvořák’s love of the Czech countryside sings and dances through his overture In Nature’s Realm. Brahms’s bittersweet Double Concerto and Schumann’s stormy Fourth Symphony are like huge, elemental landscapes in their own right, and with a conductor as inspiring as Jonathon Heyward and two of the LPO’s own Principal players as soloists, there’s no better way to explore them.

Brahms’s Double

A graceful swan, a waltzing elephant, and a whole chorus-line of high-kicking fossils … when Saint-Saëns wrote his The Carnival of the Animals, his tongue was very firmly in his cheek. But beneath the humour, there’s a real wisdom and warmth to his ever-popular ‘grand zoological fantasy’, and tonight, with the help of Sandra Albukrek’s enchanting animations, it tells a magical new story about humanity’s relationship with nature. Lidiya Yankovskaya brings the same energy and imagination to Dvořák’s storm-swept symphony, plus an immersive piano concerto featuring live electronic sound and video – a brand new showcase for the inimitable genius of genre-crossing pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama.

Carnival of the Animals

In 2006 jazz musician Terence Blanchard saw his native New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina. ‘When you’re hurt beyond anything you can imagine, I mean, it causes you to dig deep and try to find some answers’, he says. His creative response was A Tale of God’s Will – an extraordinary, emotionally charged musical testament in the symphonic jazz tradition of greats like Duke Ellington. As part of our Harmony with Nature season, Blanchard and his quintet join the LPO for a rare UK appearance – paired with Ellington’s own musical tale of man, God and nature, The River Suite.

Terence Blanchard: A Requiem for Katrina

‘Tremendous’ declared one critic when Nadine Benjamin made her Glyndebourne debut, and this dazzling British soprano has a voice that has to be heard to be believed. Today she joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra to bring all her radiance, her insight and her effortless dramatic flair to Eastbourne. How to follow that? Rising star (and LPO Fellow Conductor) Nefeli Chadouli explores the epic vistas and northern forests of Sibelius’s First Symphony: a young genius in a new nation, pouring all his imagination into music as wild as a winter storm and as wonderful as the Northern Lights.

Sibelius’s First

‘Wretches like us – we’ll always be cursed, in this world and the next.’ Poor Wozzeck is at the bottom of the heap – an underdog made for kicking, and an easy target for the powerful, the cynical and the cruel. Alban Berg’s devastating opera tells the story of a man pushed to breaking point, in some of the most searching – and searing – music of the 20th century. Wozzeck is one of those operas that simply has to be experienced live, and this one-off concert staging, with Edward Gardner conducting a cast of world-class dramatic singers, should leave you reeling.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja plays Shostakovich

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