Vladimir Jurowski conducts The London Philharmonic Orchestra

Webern - Variations Op. 30
Berg - Lulu Suite
Martinů - Double Concerto for Two String Orchestras, Piano and Timpani
Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste

Vladimir Jurowski - conductor
Barbara Hannigan - soprano

Intense darkness pervades these three works from the 1930s. Berg’s operatic masterpiece of human self-destruction Lulu lends its most surging themes to its namesake Suite for soprano and orchestra, which perfectly exposes the composer’s marrying of Serialist technique to unfailing melodic gift. Bartók’s mysteriously scored creation has the feeling of music from another world – at once utterly foreign and beguilingly beautiful. As Martinů saw his native Czechoslovakia threatened in 1938, he created a near-violent expression of courage – in his own words, ‘a current of notes that never ceases for an instant, and by a melody that passionately claims the right to freedom.’