London Symphony Orchestra

A “symphonic fantasy” was what Jean Sibelius wanted to write in his Seventh Symphony: having originally conceived it in several parts, he melted the piece down into a single movement full of rugged contrasts, whose music he described with the words “joie de vivre and vitality, with appassionato sections”. Sir Simon Rattle, who grew up with Sibelius’s symphonies – “When I was growing up in Liverpool, they were omnipresent” – has chosen Sibelius’s last surviving symphony for the programme of his guest performance with the London Symphony Orchestra: “For me, Sibelius is one of the most original composers of all.” In the remaining programme, the London Symphony Orchestra, world famous for its soft and elegant sound, which Rattle has led as Principal Conductor since 2017, demonstrates its particular versatility. Following the vibrant opening of Hector Berlioz’s brilliantly orchestrated concert overture “Le Corsaire”, it will perform “Sun Poem” by the young British composer Daniel Kidane, whose music possesses a “beguilding range of sonorities” (Financial Times). There will also be a chance to hear Maurice Ravel’s “La Valse – Poème chorégraphique”, an apocalyptic swan song for the heyday of the Viennese waltz, and the expressionist dance suite “The Miraculous Mandarin” in which Béla Bartók captured the depths of the civilized world in sound with unremitting harshness. Its premiere in Cologne in 1926 led to the greatest theatrical scandal of the Weimar Republic, after which the Lord Mayor of the time, Konrad Adenauer, personally ensured that Bartók’s work was banned from the repertoire.