Edinburgh International Festival: Philharmonia Chamber Players

Programme

Well-established and much celebrated in their own right, the Philharmonia Chamber Players form an intimate ensemble of some of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s finest musicians, bringing the larger group’s expertise and insight to masterpieces of the chamber repertoire.

As part of the Philharmonia’s multi-concert residency at the 2022 International Festival, the Chamber Players explore richly imagined music. At the end of the Second World War, Richard Strauss surveyed a musical world decimated by the conflict, and mourned its passing in his deeply moving, visionary Metamorphosen – performed here in Strauss’s original conception for seven solo string players.

For a long time inexplicably overlooked, astonishing French composer Louise Farrenc wrote with a power and punch to rival Beethoven. Her virtuosic Nonet stirs the senses with its almost orchestral richness and its surging passions. The concert opens with the richly expressive String Trio by long-time Edinburgh resident Hans Gál, at once deeply tragic and joyfully uplifting.

The Philharmonia is Orchestra in Residence at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Catch us in different performances from chamber music to opera: Philharmonia at EIF 2022.