Royal Concertgebouw Residency, Barbican Centre

Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink – since its inception in 1888, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra has boasted some of the most formidable chief conductors classical music. This year, Italian conductor Daniele Gatti joins their ranks as the leader of the world’s finest orchestra.
London audiences will already know Gatti from his thirteen-year stint as head of the Royal Philharmonic. During that time he raised their stature exponentially, affirming their position as one of London’s five world-class orchestras. With his natural charisma, his return to England is likely to make an immediate impression.
Londoners will have their first chance to witness Gatti’s new role over a pair of wide-ranging concerts in the orchestra’s Barbican International Associate Residency, part of the centre’s 2016-17 season.
First up, on 16 Dec, the Concertgebouw will play Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Ravel. For the former’s lyrical Violin Concert No. 2 (1935), they will be joined by Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili (Echoes of Time), one of the world’s most distinguished players of late romantic repertoire who, in 2015, was elected Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year. The music for Stravinsky’s playful ballet Jeu de cartes (1936-7) will follow, before the night ends with Ravel’s sumptuous Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2 (1913).
The second concert, on the afternoon of 17 Dec, ploughs a more Teutonic furrow. It opens with a series of instrumental excerpts from Wagner’s Meistersinger von Nurnberg (1868) and Götterdämmerung (1876), during which the Concertgebouw will be joined by young musicians from the National Youth Orchestra. After an interval they will play the colossal, emotionally wrenching adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10 (1910), before ending their residency with Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra (1913-5), one of the seminal works of musical modernism. It’s a bold, challenging line-up, and one that should set the tone for this new chapter in the Concertgebouw’s story.
Tickets for the Barbican Centre’s 2016-17 season open to the general public at 10am on 10 Feb. Members booking opens at the same time on 3 Feb, while Members Plus can purchase from 1 Feb.