Name: Total Immersion: Italian Radicals - O King
Start: 2024-05-05T15:00:00
Location: Milton Court Concert Hall

BBC Symphony Orchestra

In the distance, a horn sings a sad, sweet song – and Tchaikovsky begins his journey to the heights of passion and sorrow. Julia Adolphe gazes up at giant Redwood trees, and sees the shimmer of a better world. And Rachmaninov places a dark, quiet chord into silence, at the beginning of the piano concerto that made him a star.

Montero plays Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto

Barbican Centre

Great artists need great respite, and what better to refresh the musical senses than travel? In Luxor, Egypt, with the Nile in view and the sea not much further away, Saint-Saëns conjured melodies and motifs evocative of southern Spain and Northern Africa. The result was his fifth piano concerto, for which we’re joined by a virtuoso whose pizzazz is matched by only his precision – Bertrand Chamayou.

Oramo conducts Brahms' Second Symphony

A monsoon downpour and a cascade of flame: elemental forces are in play as Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra continue their season with music inspired by the environment in all its fragility and power. But Stravinsky’s dazzling Firebird suite and Judith Weir’s magical rain-spell aren’t even the half of this gloriously colourful concert.

Yeol Eum Son plays Bartók's Third Piano Concerto

Miniatures by Berio, Maderna, Nono and Dallapiccola, introduced and performed live by virtuoso instrumentalists and singers from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.