Sergei Prokofiev was on the cusp of returning to the Soviet Union when he wrote his Second Violin Concerto. Its anxious, butterflies-in-the-stomach quality moves from a dark and unsettled beginning, through a radiant, elegant second movement, and ends in a blaze of musical fireworks. It demands virtuoso insight and technique, something our soloist Rosanne Philippens (who played 'The Lark Ascending last season') has in spades. The 'New Yorker' has praised the ‘extraordinary power and intensity’ of Lera Auerbach’s music and her homage to Mozart opens the second half of this concert. But to begin, some spiky neo-classicism from the great Grażyna Bacewicz, and to end, we cut through the January gloom with the most exuberant and life-affirming of Schubert’s symphonies.
This concerts ends at approximately 3:45pm.