WELCOME TO
All art reflects human society – all that is good and all that is bad in the world. And yet, for centuries, composers have produced some of their most profound work in the most testing times. Societies change, politicians argue, people fight: and yet music endures and evolves, bringing people together, helping us find meaning in our own times and sometimes – hopefully – showing us the way to a better future.
I believe strongly that music has the power to unite us, and that whatever our differences, in the concert hall we all share the same emotions. So this season, in my concerts with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall and Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, we’re exploring and celebrating composers who found themselves at odds with their societies. It’s easy to forget that Strauss’
An Alpine Symphony, Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto and Shostakovich’s ‘Leningrad’ Symphony were composed in the middle of worldwide conflicts. Berg and Stravinsky were both booed when these pieces were first played – but today, they’re true classics, and I can’t wait to conduct them.
Then there are composers who faced exile and adversity and transformed those experiences into pure life force – as thrilling as Korngold’s film scores, as romantic as Chopin, or as energising as Bartók’s
Concerto for Orchestra. Other great creative spirits faced prejudice simply because of who they were, but I challenge you to find music more communicative, or more humane, than Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement, or Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony.
These are inspiring stories which challenge us all to build a better world today. Joining us to share this experience are soloists who feel as passionately as we do about this magnificent music – Maxim Vengerov, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Yunchan Lim, Paul Lewis, Bruce Liu and Roderick Williams.
But even the greatest music is silent if no one hears it, and the most vital element is you. I extend a heartfelt invitation to come and join us this season. In return, we’ll play our hearts out. Music brings people together; let’s share it this season.
Vasily Petrenko Music Director, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Image credit: Ben Wright
Sunday 26 January 2025, 3pm
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall
Berg Three Pieces for Orchestra
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5, ‘Emperor’
Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
Music thrives on change: for centuries, great composers have channelled the spirit of their age into music that shocked some and gripped others, but which has never lost its power to thrill. Stravinsky’s taboo-smashing ballet provides the final blast tonight as Vasily Petrenko conducts this explosive opening concert of the RPO’s new series. But first, he explores the rich, strange and sometimes violent new sounds that Alban Berg created in the Vienna of Klimt and Mahler. And he is joined by the superb British pianist Paul Lewis in a masterpiece that broke all the rules and still sounds just as exciting today. It’s the concerto they call the ‘Emperor’: daring, majestic and filled from beginning to end with the irrepressible genius of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Paul Lewis Piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Join the journey rpo.co.uk
Sunday 23 March 2025, 7.30pm
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall
Korngold The Sea Hawk: Main Theme, Reunion and Finale
Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra
Brave new worlds: when Rachmaninov fled the Russian Revolution, he couldn’t know that he would never see his homeland again.
His Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is the music of a great romantic making a new life in a world of fast cars, liners and jazz – as brilliant as it is passionate. It’s a perfect showcase for International Chopin Piano Competition winner Bruce Liu, and Vasily Petrenko frames it with two classics from 1940s America. Both Korngold and Bartók 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 for a great orchestra at the top of its game. It’s a struggle between darkness and light, crowned by a mighty shout of joy.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Bruce Liu Piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sunday 27 April 2025, 3pm
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall
Sibelius Finlandia
Weill Four Walt Whitman Songs
Shostakovich Symphony No.7, ‘Leningrad’
As Hitler’s armies surrounded the city of Leningrad and bombs rained down on a starving population, Shostakovich sat down and –somehow – composed his Seventh Symphony. Written for massed battalions of musicians, this is music from the front line – a roar of defiance from an unbreakable city. It’s a stupendous climax to a concert that’s all about struggle and resistance: whether it’s Sibelius defying Russian imperialism with a mighty hymn to his native Finland, or the poet Walt Whitman’s pleas for tolerance, set to music by the exiled Kurt Weill. Singing the Four Walt Whitman Songs today is the fabulous British baritone Roderick Williams: a born communicator.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Roderick Williams OBE Baritone
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
ON SALE AUTUMN 2024
This concert has been developed with the Southbank Centre, with further details to be announced.
This performance is funded in part by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc., New York, NY
Tuesday 20 May 2025, 7.30pm
Royal Albert Hall
Mussorgsky, orch. Rimsky-Korsakov
Night on the Bare Mountain
Chopin Piano Concerto No.2
Strauss An Alpine Symphony
Frederic Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination. There’s a burning fire beneath the poetry of his music, or as one contemporary put it ‘cannons hidden in flowers’. In the hands of Yunchan Lim – who in 2022 became the youngest-ever winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition – his Second Piano Concerto will blaze as never before. But first comes Mussorgsky, battling his demons in music of spine-tingling drama. And then Vasily Petrenko is our guide as we join Richard Strauss on a sonic ascent into the Bavarian Alps. Expect waterfalls, glaciers, alpine meadows and soul-shaking vistas, all painted in some of the most dazzling sounds ever imagined for a supersized orchestra.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Yunchan Lim Piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sunday 25 May 2025, 3pm
Royal Albert Hall
Strauss Don Juan
Sibelius Violin Concerto
Stravinsky The Firebird (Complete Ballet)
‘You could never accuse violinist Maxim Vengerov of playing it safe’ wrote one critic – going on to praise ‘the sense of meaning and purpose… and, above all, that effortless charisma’. But perhaps it’s easiest to come and hear for yourself, as Vengerov summons the fire and ice of Sibelius’ windswept Violin Concerto. It’s music from an era of new beginnings and strong emotions – whether the swashbuckling, sensuous thrills of Richard Strauss’ Don Juan or the ear-popping colours of Stravinsky’s fairytale ballet The Firebird. When The Firebird premiered in Paris, four years before World War I, it was as if Stravinsky had waved a magic wand across the orchestra, and the tale of the enchanted Firebird, the demon Kaschei and the courageous Prince Ivan is one that Vasily Petrenko never tires of retelling.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Maxim Vengerov Violin
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Wednesday 25 June 2025, 7.30pm
Dorothy Howell Lamia
Florence Price Piano Concerto in One Movement
Tchaikovsky Symphony No.4
For centuries, even the most gifted composers have found themselves persecuted or marginalised simply because of who they were.
As a gay man in Tsarist Russia, Tchaikovsky knew what it was to be an outsider, and he poured all his emotions into his Fourth Symphony: a no-holds-barred emotional autobiography, pulsing with melody and torn by raw and dangerous passions. There’s no shortage of great melodies in the first half of the concert, too, as Petrenko champions British composer Dorothy Howell’s Lamia – a wildly romantic tale of forbidden love – and the lovely piano concerto by the African-American composer Florence Price. Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, making her RPO debut, is the soloist in music that was side-lined for decades and is only now receiving its due.
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall ON SALE AUTUMN 2024
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason Piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
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Southbank Centre’s
Royal Festival Hall
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Royal Albert Hall
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