Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and

Vasily Petrenko

October 2023 – June 2024

Sun 29 Oct 2023, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Elgar’s Symphony No.1

Lera Auerbach Icarus

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2 with Nikolai Lugansky

Elgar Symphony No.1

Wed 8 Nov 2023, 7.30pm

Royal Albert Hall

Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker: Act II

Tchaikovsky Iolanta

Thu 8 Feb 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No.2

Elgar Cockaigne Overture

R. Strauss Six Songs After Poems by Brentano with Jennifer France

Rachmaninov Symphony No.2

Wed 13 Mar 2024, 7.30pm

Royal Albert Hall

Wagner’s Grand Festival

Wagner Huldigungsmarsch

Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (selection)

Wagner Das Rheingold: Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge

Wagner Die Walküre (selection)

Wagner Götterdammerung (selection)

Wed 27 Mar 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Elgar’s Symphony No.2

Ethel Smyth The Wreckers: Overture

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3 with Yunchan Lim

Elgar Symphony No.2

Thu 11 Apr 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Rachmaninov’s The Bells

Elgar In the South (Alassio)

Weinberg Cello Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE

Rachmaninov The Bells

Tue 23 Apr 2024, 7.30pm

Royal Albert Hall

Verdi’s Requiem

Verdi Requiem

Sun 9 Jun 2024, 3pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with soloist tbc

Elgar Falstaff

When we say that an artist has become an icon, we mean it as a compliment. An icon is an image, and unchanging ideal – perfection, in other words, to be imitated and admired. But what happens when an icon becomes so familiar that we start to take them for granted?

Then it’s time to look – and listen – afresh. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and I are setting out to do just that. We want to take that music down from its pedestal, and rediscover the burning inspiration, the living emotion and the human personality behind even the most iconic of masterpieces.

At the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, our five concerts focus on two icons of Romantic music – the Russian Sergei Rachmaninov and the Englishman Sir Edward Elgar. Both of these composers intended their music to touch the heart. ‘There is music in the air,’ said Elgar, and as well as his two passionately autobiographical symphonies (as ambitious, and intimate, as anything by Mahler), we will perform two of his concert overtures that reveal very different faces of this most British of composers: the joker, the man of the people, the enthusiastic European traveller. For Rachmaninov, meanwhile, the bells of old Russia ‘vibrated with human emotion’ and when you hear our performance of his superb choral symphony, The Bells, you’ll understand exactly what he meant.

Alongside these works of Elgar and Rachmaninov, we explore music from their contemporaries, Weinberg and Smyth, as well as living composer Lera Auerbach, whose music complements and contrasts with these earlier icons.

But we’re not stopping there. With the Royal Albert Hall we can reimagine the works of three timeless composers on a grand scale, combining large-scale orchestral forces with the power of the human voice. It is a vast building that demands a big performance, and whether it’s Verdi’s epic Requiem, a night of Wagner with some of the most thrilling voices on the planet, or a lovely, neglected fairytale opera by Rachmaninov’s great hero Tchaikovsky, the point remains the same. These artists and these works have become icons, yes: but when they’re explored by artists of this calibre, and with this kind of commitment, they’re very much alive –and able to work miracles.

Whether you are discovering these works and composers for the first time, or delving deeper to look at things from a fresh angle, we invite you to join us; together we can continue our musical journey.

Vasily Petrenko Music Director, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Sunday 29 October 2023, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Lera Auerbach Icarus

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.2

Elgar Symphony No.1

For Rachmaninov, an unforgettable tune was a point of arrival. For Elgar, it was the start of a journey. ‘Great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future’ was how Elgar described the message of his First Symphony, and when it was premiered in Manchester in 1908, the audience simply rose to its feet and cheered.

But that’s a common response to both these composers, and in this first concert of his Icons Rediscovered series, Vasily Petrenko explores the dark passions that drive two very different, but equally beloved masterpieces – with the magnificent Nikolai Lugansky taking the spotlight in Rachmaninov’s ever-popular Second Piano Concerto.

First, though, Lera Auerbach celebrates another legend – Icarus –in music that flashes across the sky.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Nikolai Lugansky Piano

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Wednesday 8 November 2023, 7.30pm Royal Albert Hall

Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker: Act II

Tchaikovsky Iolanta (semi-staged)

A blind princess, a doting father, and a miracle cure that can only act through the power of true love. No composer knew how to tell stories and tug at the heartstrings better than Tchaikovsky, and his fairytale drama Iolanta is one of those operas that leaves audiences reaching for their handkerchiefs. Vasily Petrenko loves it, and for this one-off semi-staged revival at the Royal Albert Hall, he has gathered a truly world-class cast: singers who have known Tchaikovsky’s music all their lives. First though, comes the music that the composer originally intended to programme in concert with Iolanta: the magic (and mouthwatering melodies) of The Nutcracker. A familiar masterpiece and a neglected one: together at last, just as Tchaikovsky would have wanted.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Maria Motolygina Iolanta

Alexey Dolgov Count

Vaudémont

Alexander Tsymbalyuk René

Andrei Kymach Robert

Vladislav Sulimsky Ibn-Hakia

Bekhzod Davronov Alméric

Pavlo Hunka Bertrand

Veena Akama-Makia Marta*

Isabela Díaz Brigitta*

Gabrielė Kupšytė Laura*

Philharmonia Chorus

Denni Sayers Director

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Thursday 8 February 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Elgar Cockaigne Overture

R. Strauss Six Songs After Poems by Brentano Rachmaninov Symphony No.2

When Vasily Petrenko conducts Russian music, you know to expect big emotions, and they don’t come much bigger than in Rachmaninov’s glorious Second Symphony. This is music of rolling stormclouds, blissful romance and melodies that seem to stretch out to the horizon, and when Petrenko recorded it, The Observer described the results as ‘essential listening’. The same goes for the British soprano Jennifer France. Following outstanding performances as the glamourous Zerbinetta in Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos in 2022, tonight she brings that same sensational voice to a more intimate (but no less beautiful) side of Strauss. Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture, meanwhile, is a bustling, brilliant portrait of London at the height of its Edwardian splendour. British music simply doesn’t get more colourful – or more fun.

Wednesday 13 March 2024, 7.30pm

Royal Albert Hall

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Jennifer France Soprano

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ON SALE AUTUMN 2023

Wagner Huldigungsmarsch

Wagner Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg: Prelude to Act I and Was duftet doch der Flieder

Wagner Das Rheingold: Abendlich strahlt der Sonne Auge

Wagner Die Walküre: Ride of the Valkyries and Wotan’s Farewell and Magic Fire Music

Wagner Götterdammerung: Prologue: Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey; Act I: Duet; Act III: Siegfried’s Death and Funeral Music, Brünnhilde’s Immolation and Finale

Richard Wagner didn’t just write operas: he created worlds. Heroes struggle, gods rise and fall, and whole universes crash in ruins, all swept along by some of the most intoxicating music ever composed. But you haven’t heard Wagner until you’ve heard him performed live, and in this all-Wagner spectacular, inspired by Wagner’s own eight-concert festival at the Royal Albert Hall in 1877, Vasily Petrenko and three of the greatest living Wagnerian singers surrender to that passion all night long. From the moonlit magic of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg through the Ride of the Valkyries to the apocalyptic final scene of Götterdammerung – where a woman’s heart redeems the world – they’ll prove, once again, the single most important fact about this most overwhelming of composers. Forget the myths, forget the horned helmets, and forget yourself: it’s all about love.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Andreas Schager Tenor

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Wednesday 27 March 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Ethel Smyth The Wreckers: Overture

Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No.3

Elgar Symphony No.2

‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!’ The orchestra hovers, poised. It pulls back – and then surges forward in wave upon sweeping wave of golden sound. Nothing in British music is more exhilarating than the opening of Elgar’s Second Symphony, and nothing quite matches what follows: a passionate, no-holds-barred emotional autobiography, ending in a sunset of heartbreaking beauty. If that doesn’t sound like your idea of British music, let Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra show you what you’ve been missing. It’s hard to imagine a more magnificent complement to Rachmaninov’s mightiest (and most opulent) piano concerto, played tonight by the 2022 Van Cliburn competition gold medallist Yunchan Lim, and a swashbuckling, storm-swept overture by the Suffragette composer Dame Ethel Smyth.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Yunchan Lim Piano

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Thursday 11 April 2024, 7.30pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Elgar In the South (Alassio)

Weinberg Cello Concerto

Rachmaninov The Bells

In the old Russia of Rachmaninov’s youth, bells rang and chimed throughout the whole of life: the bronze-voiced heralds of joy, terror, love – and oblivion. They peal, too, through Rachmaninov’s great choral symphony The Bells, in music that’s exactly as heartfelt, as gorgeous and as unforgettably tuneful as you’d expect from the composer of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Rachmaninov thought it was one of his greatest works and Vasily Petrenko agrees, making this London performance a real high point of the series. It’s the climax of a concert filled with great music that goes beyond your expectations: from Elgar relaxing in the Italian sunshine to a powerful, forgotten cello concerto by Shostakovich’s great friend Mieczysław Weinberg – championed today by the irrepressible Sheku Kanneh-Mason.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE Cello

Olga Pudova Soprano

Pavel Petrov Tenor

Andrei Kymach Baritone

Philharmonia Chorus

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Tuesday 23 April 2024, 7.30pm

Royal Albert Hall

Verdi Requiem

Dies irae, dies illa…Trumpets blast, drums thunder and a mighty chorus cries out in terror. A Requiem is a service for the dead, but there was never any chance that an old fighter like Giuseppe Verdi would go quietly into the night. Sure enough, his huge Requiem mass has been called the grandest opera he never wrote: thrillingly dramatic, blazing with emotion and conceived on an absolutely gigantic scale. Vasily Petrenko has assembled a stellar team of soloists plus the full Philharmonia Chorus: all ready to storm the very heavens. It’s a piece that could have been written to be heard in the majestic surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, and believe us, tonight you’ll feel the air shake.

Sunday 9 June 2024, 3pm

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Miah Persson Soprano

Jennifer Johnston Mezzo-soprano

Stefano La Colla Tenor

Alexander Vinogradov Bass

Philharmonia Chorus

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini

Elgar Falstaff

Matinee Performance: All tickets just £15 and £5 for under 18s

A concert of two characters, equally icons to be explored just like the composers within this series. Written in the twilight years of his career, Rachmaniov first put pen to paper in the summer of 1934 on what would become one of his most beloved works. Pitting piano against orchestra, Rachmaninov takes all the hellish fire of dazzling violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, turning his little melody on its head to create something entirely new, with the magical Variation 18 being the stand-out movement.

And then the concert takes a Shakespearean turn with Elgar’s symphonic poem Falstaff. In what Elgar considered to be one of his finest orchestral works, he paints a vivid musical portrait of the anti-hero of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, with colourful orchestrations and characterful depictions.

Vasily Petrenko Conductor

Soloist tbc

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

ON SALE AUTUMN 2023