Santtu conducts Scheherazade
Booking for Friends of the Philharmonia opens at 10am on Thursday 4 November. General booking opens Thursday 11 November.
This afternoon’s programme gives every member of the orchestra a well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
A quiet but inexorable snare drum rhythm opens Ravel’s Boléro. It ushers in a haunting melody that’s passed around the orchestra, slowly building to a roof-raising climax.
Alexandre Kantorow triumphed in the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019, and Gramophone described him as ‘the real deal, a fire-breathing virtuoso.’ Saint-Saëns’s dazzling Piano Concerto No. 2 demands every ounce of virtuosity he can muster, but there’s poetry too in the opening movement, and a carefree playfulness in the central Scherzo.
In Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov said he wanted to evoke the ‘fairytale wonders’ of The 1001 Nights. A tender, graceful solo violin melody represents Scheherazade herself, and Rimsky-Korsakov deploys all the colours of the orchestra as she tells her bewitching tales of princes and princesses, sailors and storms.
Need to know
Prices & Discounts
£13 – £65
Multi-buy offer available; under-18s and concessions discounts available
Student tickets
£8
Available through Student Pulse.
Limited availability.
Running time:
2h, including a 20 minute interval
Recommended age
From 7+
Programme notes
Read the programme notes here. Free printed programmes will be available at the venue.
Box office
Philharmonia Box Office: 0800 652 6717
Monday to Friday 10am – 5pm
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