Alexandre Kantorow plays Liszt

Programme

In 2019, Alexandre Kantorow won not just the gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition, but the Grand Prix, an extra prize awarded for only the fourth time in the competition’s six decades.

The accolades haven’t stopped since. His Southbank Centre debut last year was a sell-out, with The Times’s critic writing ‘I doubt anyone was quite prepared for the experience of hearing this phenomenal French pianist live… his sound was remarkable.’

Kantorow joins the Philharmonia in Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, an uninterrupted 20 minutes of poetry in music, brimming with intense emotions.

Conductor Manfred Honeck, at the helm of the Philharmonia for the first time, pairs Liszt with his contemporary and fellow Romantic original Anton Bruckner.

Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony was his last – he died before he could complete it and we are left with three complete movements and sketches for the fourth. The third movement makes an apt swansong for this devout and soul-searching composer. After quotes from Bruckner’s earlier symphonies and his setting of the Miserere, a psalm asking God for mercy, the music floats into sublime peace, and then silence.