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.
Mussorgsky, orch. Rimsky-Korsakov Night on the Bare Mountain
Chopin Piano Concerto No.2
Strauss An Alpine Symphony
Vasily Petrenko Conductor
Yunchan Lim Piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra