London Philharmonic Orchestra

Rachmaninoff: Inside Out
The spirit of Russia

7:30 PM, ​ ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL, LONDON

JTI Friday Series

Rachmaninoff: The Isle of the Dead
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 1 (original version)
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances

Vladimir Jurowski: conductor
Alexander Ghindin: piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra

The spirit of Russia permeated everything Rachmaninoff wrote, even after his final exile to
America. There, in 1940, the composer composed his last orchestral score, the Symphonic Dances. A strange sense of foreboding pervades these compelling orchestral choreographies, but there’s optimism, too: in the last dance, against a baleful quotation from the death-themed plainchant Dies Irae, Rachmaninoff quotes the striving ‘Alleluia’ from his own All-Night Vigil. Rachmaninoff wasn’t about to let the forces of death win through, but he appears a long way here from the 17-year-old student who, in a period of total inspiration one summer, wrote a dashing, impassioned First Piano Concerto full of the joys of youth.

In co-operation with the Serge Rachmaninoff Foundation.