After a ‘dazzling’ Proms debut last year, pianist and global phenomenon Yunchan Lim returns, joining Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Rachmaninov’s final piano concerto. Rich in scope and ambition, tinged with the jazz rhythms and harmonies of the composer’s new homeland, it’s a technical tour de force. Musical visions from the New World continue in the two other works: John Adams’s ‘foxtrot for orchestra’ The Chairman Dances, a surreal set-piece from his hit opera Nixon in China, in which a young Mao Zedong dances with the future Madame Mao; and Berio’s iconic Sinfonia (dedicated to Leonard Bernstein) – an explosive, psychedelic remix of classical music’s past that asks big questions about its future.
Programme
John Adams: The Chairman Dances (12 mins)
Sergey Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor (29 mins)
– interval –
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia (27 mins)
Performers
Yunchan Lim: piano
BBC Singers
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Kazuki Yamada: conductor