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
(automatically generated) We didn’t review this event, but Diya Mitra did, here.