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Classical Music

Memory of an Angel, Royal Festival Hall

On 22 Feb 17, 7:30 PM – 9:45 PM

There are intimations of mortality in the London Philharmonic Orchestra's concert – but music fights back with humour

By Claudia Pritchard on 28/1/2017

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the soloist in Berg's haunting Violin Concerto. Photograph: Julia Wesely
Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the soloist in Berg's haunting Violin Concerto. Photograph: Julia Wesely
Memory of an Angel, Royal Festival Hall Memory of an Angel, Royal Festival Hall Claudia Pritchard
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.

by Claudia Pritchard

What Memory of an Angel, Royal Festival Hall
Where Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX | MAP
Nearest tube Waterloo (underground)
When On 22 Feb 17, 7:30 PM – 9:45 PM
Price £10 - £46
Website Click here for more information and booking



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Royal Festival Hall

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski

Shostakovich

Berg

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