Philharmonia announces new online & broadcast concerts at Southbank Centre

In October the Philharmonia Orchestra will perform on the Royal Festival Hall stage for the first time since 15 March 2020, in the first of four live-streamed concerts as part of the Southbank Centre’s autumn Inside Out series.

Featuring artists including Principal Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Principal Conductor Designate Santtu-Matias Rouvali, guest conductor Elim Chan, soprano Julia Bullock and violinist Sergey Khachatryan, the four concerts will also be the Orchestra’s first paid-for, ticketed performances since before the COVID-19 lockdown. More details, along with the full programme for the Philharmonia’s online audience season, will be announced shortly.

Incoming Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali opens the series on 26th October with a programme of American music: Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring; Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood (with Rouvali as one of the five percussionists); Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks and Dances in the Canebrakes by Florence Price (1887-1953), an African-American composer whose works have been rediscovered in the last few years, as profiled by Alex Ross in the New Yorker.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts Britten’s Les Illuminations (with soprano Julia Bullock) and Ravel’s Mother Goose (complete) for the second concert on 29th October. Both Rouvali and Salonen’s concerts will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 alongside the audio-visual live stream.

On 12th November Elim Chan, who would have conducted the Philharmonia at Edinburgh International Festival this summer, leads a programme including Jessie Montgomery’s Strum and Sergey Khachatryan performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. The programme for the final concert on 30th November is to be announced.