Bedford: Bruce Liu plays Ravel

Programme

The Philharmonia welcomes outstanding pianist Bruce Liu to Bedford.  

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G was inspired by the jazz he heard on a tour of the United States. Ravel frames a serenely beautiful Adagio with outer movements of carefree, effervescent energy. It’s the perfect showcase for the “magician’s fingers” (Le Monde) of Bruce Liu, winner of the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition.  

Tchaikovsky himself said that his Fifth Symphony represented “a complete resignation before Fate”, but that hasn’t stopped it becoming a firm audience favourite. It opens with the sound of funereal footsteps on the clarinet. A singing horn melody gives the second movement a more hopeful mood, but the fateful ‘footsteps’ theme returns in the third movement waltz, and triumphs in the stormy finale.  

To open, Ryan Bancroft has chosen Britten’s Four Sea Interludes. They’re taken from his opera Peter Grimes, a compelling portrait of a fishing community whose lives are intertwined with the sea and the weather. The orchestra vividly depicts the different faces of the sea, from dawn tranquility to a fearsome storm.