Philharmonia Chamber Players: Transfigured Night

Programme

This free 45-minute concert showcases the skills of six Philharmonia string players.  

It’s not often that classically trained musicians are encouraged to ‘break away’ from the notation and improvise, but Jessie Montgomery’s piece Break Away asks them to do just that. She writes phrases that can be repeated, riffed on, overlap and interrupt one another, and her instructions to the players include the crucial words ‘Have fun!’.  

The passionate emotions of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht make it perhaps his most popular work. Composed in 1902 in a lush, late-Romantic style, it traces a story from a contemporary poem. A woman confesses to her lover that she is pregnant with another man’s child. Her fear and despair give way to joy as he promises that their love for each other will make the child his, and the ‘high, bright night’ itself is transformed.  

Pop in just for this 45-minute concert, or stay with the nocturnal mood and book for our 7.30pm performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, nicknamed ‘Song of the Night’ (separate ticket required).