Tchaikovsky's Winter Daydreams, Royal Festival Hall
A meltingly beautiful early symphony and a dynamic piano concerto rejoice in the thrills of an icy chill
Beatrice Rana is one of the most exciting young pianists appearing today. Photo: Marie Staggat
The Italian-born pianist Beatrice Rana has become the hottest property in classical music with prize after prize, and now the Gramophone award 2017 for best young artist, and you can catch this amazing talent in London.
She joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra for an all-Russian programme – her playing in this repertoire is award-winning too. She performs Prokofiev’s bittersweet and witty Piano Concerto No 3, and it's certain to be special.
Music depicting the cycle of the year has an enduring popularity (think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Haydn’s The Seasons), so a concert featuring both a sparkling depiction of a Russian winter and a sun-kissed English landscape is a tempting prospect for a night out in late November.
Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, entitled Winter Daydreams is more than the composer’s first symphonic exploration; it’s really the first truly Russian symphony. In the 1860s, Russian symphonic form was still derivatively wedded to the German tradition – but Tchaikovsky wanted to free himself, and Russian music, from those constraints.
Despite fierce resistance from conservative colleagues at the Moscow Conservatoire the 26-year-old produced something entirely fresh and original, and set himself on a path that was to see five more gloriously original symphonies take their place in the canon. Winter Daydreams is beguilingly crisp, sweet and lovely.
Before the London Philharmonic Orchestra explores Tchaikovsky’s frozen landscape we can enjoy the blissful sunshine of Frank Bridge’s Summer. Bridge (1879-1941) was a British musician of prodigious talent, both as a performer and a composer. Taught by Charles Villiers Stanford, the composer of great church music, he in turn became teacher to the young Benjamin Britten. Britten recalls a stickler; a man who could not abide sloppiness in compositional technique.
Summer, from 1914, is one of Bridge’s most concise and popular tone poems, but his idyll is clouded when we consider it was composed as Europe embarked on a catastrophic war.
And the evening has a special guest conductor, Michail Jurowski, father of Vladimir Jurowski, the orchestra’s principal conductor.
This is an absolute must-go, from first bar to last.
She joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra for an all-Russian programme – her playing in this repertoire is award-winning too. She performs Prokofiev’s bittersweet and witty Piano Concerto No 3, and it's certain to be special.
Music depicting the cycle of the year has an enduring popularity (think Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Haydn’s The Seasons), so a concert featuring both a sparkling depiction of a Russian winter and a sun-kissed English landscape is a tempting prospect for a night out in late November.
Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, entitled Winter Daydreams is more than the composer’s first symphonic exploration; it’s really the first truly Russian symphony. In the 1860s, Russian symphonic form was still derivatively wedded to the German tradition – but Tchaikovsky wanted to free himself, and Russian music, from those constraints.
Despite fierce resistance from conservative colleagues at the Moscow Conservatoire the 26-year-old produced something entirely fresh and original, and set himself on a path that was to see five more gloriously original symphonies take their place in the canon. Winter Daydreams is beguilingly crisp, sweet and lovely.
Before the London Philharmonic Orchestra explores Tchaikovsky’s frozen landscape we can enjoy the blissful sunshine of Frank Bridge’s Summer. Bridge (1879-1941) was a British musician of prodigious talent, both as a performer and a composer. Taught by Charles Villiers Stanford, the composer of great church music, he in turn became teacher to the young Benjamin Britten. Britten recalls a stickler; a man who could not abide sloppiness in compositional technique.
Summer, from 1914, is one of Bridge’s most concise and popular tone poems, but his idyll is clouded when we consider it was composed as Europe embarked on a catastrophic war.
And the evening has a special guest conductor, Michail Jurowski, father of Vladimir Jurowski, the orchestra’s principal conductor.
This is an absolute must-go, from first bar to last.
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| What | Tchaikovsky's Winter Daydreams, Royal Festival Hall |
| Where | Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX | MAP |
| Nearest tube | Waterloo (underground) |
| When |
On 22 Nov 17, 7:30 PM – 9:45 PM |
| Price | £10 - £65 |
| Website | Click here for more information and booking |