For Rachmaninov, meanwhile, the bells of old Russia ‘vibrated with human emotion’ and when you hear our performance of his superb choral symphony, The Bells, you’ll understand exactly what he meant.Īlongside these works of Elgar and Rachmaninov, we explore music from their contemporaries, Weinberg and Smyth, as well as living composer Lera Auerbach, whose music complements and contrasts with these earlier icons.īut we’re not stopping there. ‘There is music in the air,’ said Elgar, and as well as his two passionately autobiographical symphonies (as ambitious, and intimate, as anything by Mahler), we will perform two of his concert overtures that reveal very different faces of this most British of composers: the joker, the man of the people, the enthusiastic European traveller.

Both of these composers intended their music to touch the heart. We want to take that music down from its pedestal, and rediscover the burning inspiration, the living emotion and the human personality behind even the most iconic of masterpieces.Īt the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, our five concerts focus on two icons of Romantic music – the Russian Sergei Rachmaninov and the Englishman Sir Edward Elgar. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and I are setting out to do just that. But what happens when an icon becomes so familiar that we start to take them for granted? Then it’s time to look – and listen – afresh.

An icon is an image, and unchanging ideal – perfection, in other words, to be imitated and admired. When we say that an artist has become an icon, we mean it as a compliment.

Symbols for discovr music