London Philharmonic Orchestra: An Alpine Symphony

Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4
R Strauss An Alpine Symphony

Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Alexey Zuev piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra

The last piece of the season is also the last, largest and longest in the spectacular line of tone poems written by the great musical conjuror Richard Strauss. Strauss loved the Alps and long dreamed of writing a piece based on them. When he finally found the time to do so in 1914, he went all-out for his new symphonic homage to the mountains. The orchestra wasn’t just swollen to 150 players, it included 12 off-stage horns as well as wind and thunder machines. Strauss’s magnificent journey from tentative sunrise to transcendent sunset has to be heard live to similarly long-breathed phrases and magnetic impulse of Rachmaninoff’s final piano concerto.