Watch on demand: Tchaikovsky & Sibelius

Programme

SIBELIUS Dance Intermezzo Op. 45 No. 2

TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1

SIBELIUS King Christian II Suite

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“[O]ne of the most original and enchanting performances of this concerto I’ve heard in years.”

Simon Thompson, Bachtrack.

Pavel Kolesnikov, a pianist “in full command of a magnificent range of powers” (The Arts Desk), has risen from BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist to major soloist, most recently in the Wigmore Hall’s streamed lockdown recitals. He joins the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Rory Macdonald in Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a rollercoaster of emotions from its first implacable chords to its fiery finale.

Sibelius’s King Christian II Suite was written in 1904 for a play telling of the fall of a 16th-century ruler. Sibelius gives some movements an ancient flavour, with pairs of woodwinds playing rustic tunes. Other movements paint Romantic pictures of dusk and night-time with lush string melodies. The rousing final movement would have filled a contemporary Finnish audience with patriotic fervour, in no doubt as to the play’s nationalist, anti-Russian subtext. Sibelius’s short Dance Intermezzo, with its tambourines and castanets, transports us to the sunny Mediterranean.

Filmed as live at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, and presented by Georgia Mann.

Capture date: 18 March 2021