Memory of an Angel, Royal Festival Hall

The Viennese composer Alban Berg was writing his vast opera Lulu (recently staged by English National Opera), when the daughter of a friend died of polio. This was 18-year-old Manon Gropius, whose mother was Alma Mahler, formerly married to the composer Gustav Mahler, and then to the architect and Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Manon's father.

Berg interrupted his opera to write his sole Violin Concerto, dedicated to "The Memory of an Angel", which contains all the grief of this terrible loss, but also a transcendent finale. The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the soloist in this performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

The Russian-born conductor has chosen not one but two symphonies to open and close the concert, both by fellow Russians. The Second (and last) Symphony by the prolific – and blacklisted – Edison Denisov was first performed in the year of the composer's death, 1996, and contains intimations of mortality. The Symphony No 15 by Dimitri Shostakovich was that composer's last symphony too, and is packed with jokey references and black humour.

Expect a highly-charged performance of all three works by an orchestra fired up by its conductor and emphatically London's Russian specialists.