Firm Favourites
Enjoy classical favourites performed live on stage by the London Philharmonic Orchestra
Part of the 2018/19 season at Royal Festival Hall
Experience the wonder of live orchestral music with us this season. Enjoy Orff’s thrilling Carmina Burana, get emotional with heart-on-sleeves music from Tchaikovsky or be transported to Paris with Gershwin’s An American in Paris.
Read on for our selection of concerts that feature some of the best-loved classical music around. Or, you can browse all our London concerts here.
Mitsuko Uchida | 29 September 2018
No living pianist plays Mozart with more poetry than Mitsuko Uchida. Hear her perform Mozart's final piano concerto before Sarah Connolly and Stuart Skelton join the LPO for Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde.
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Carmina Burana | 13 October 2018
If it’s high-octane musical drama you’re after, look no further than Carl Orff’s choral showstopper Carmina Burana. Written for huge forces and chock full of terrific melodies and truly epic moments, it’s no wonder that generations of film composers have turned to this iconic work for inspiration when scoring some of cinema’s most dramatic scenes.
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Moscow nights | 19 October 2018
An all-Russian programme of full-throttle emotions and heart-stopping melodies, including Tchaikovsky’s unashamedly passionate Fifth Symphony. Surrender to the romance and drama of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 performed by Benjamin Grosvenor and it’s not hard to hear why it’s been a firm audience favourite for over a century.
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French fancies | 24 October 2018
Be whisked back to the golden age of Hollywood with Gershwin’s An American in Paris, the original jazz-infused orchestral masterpiece that inspired the Broadway musical, ballet, and iconic film of the same name. Gershwin’s Parisian fairytale is just one part of a programme full of French delights, which also includes a beautiful set of French folk song arrangements, Canteloube’s ravishing Songs of the Auvergne.
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Fantastique! | 14 November 2018
Never one for understatement, Berlioz’s crazily entertaining Symphonie Fantastique really is just that: an opium-fuelled phantasmagoria full of witchcraft and star-crossed romance, and complete with a notorious musical depiction of a public beheading. It’s really got to be heard to be believed, as does Gounoud’s Concerto for Pedal Piano, a delightful one-off written for a piano fitted out with a second keyboard for the pianist’s feet!
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Le Villi | 21 November 2018
The fabulous Ermonela Jaho leads a stellar cast in Puccini’s sumptuous first opera: a story of seasons, spirits and a love stronger than death. And as you’d expect from Puccini, it’s bursting with glorious melodies.
In association with Opera Rara.
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Pictures at an Exhibition | 30 November 2018
Step inside the magical world of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a series of stunningly imaginative miniatures bursting with orchestral colour. Three short pieces by Liadov are also drawn from the mysterious depths of Russian folklore, and presented here alongside what is probably the most-loved of all violin concertos, Bruch’s famous First.
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Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto | 5 December 2018
Vladimir Jurowski and award-winning young Russian virtuoso Alena Baeva share Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. They could have been born to play this sweetest of all Russian masterpieces for violin and orchestra.
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Dido and Aeneas | 30 January 2019
Roger Norrington conducts a fabulous cast in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, telling the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage’s destiny, and cementing Purcell as a truly great opera composer. Before, hear Handel’s gloriously extravagant Water Music – written to entertain Londoners in 1717 and just as much fun in 2019.
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Spirit of romance | 8 February 2019
Chopin has a claim to being the world’s favourite creator of gorgeous piano music, and tonight’s concert is a chance to discover the timeless romance of his First Piano Concerto. But you won’t stay dewy-eyed for long – in the second half experience the joyful rush of Elgar’s Second Symphony, a rip-roaring shout of delight from Britain’s best-loved composer.
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Beethoven Piano Concertos | 22-23 February 2019
Critics from around the world have been queuing up to praise Javier Perianes’s charisma and ‘utter brilliance’ (The Sunday Times). Beethoven’s five piano concertos demand every quality that a truly great pianist possesses: Perianes has them all. Over two extraordinary concerts, Perianes presents nothing less than a portrait-in-the-round of Beethoven as revolutionary, poet and virtuoso.
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Romantic dreams | 27 February 2019
Be transported to the sunny slopes of the Austrian Alps in Brahms’s deeply heartfelt Symphony No. 2, a piece filled with lullabies, folk songs and great bursts of passion. Just as it is among the great gems of symphonic music, so too is Weber’s Clarinet Concerto one of the most celebrated works for clarinet and orchestra, full of brooding intensity and romance
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Legends of the north | 5 April 2019
Thrillingly bombastic and astoundingly virtuosic, it’s easy to hear why Grieg’s firecracker of a Piano Concerto has become one of the most enduringly popular of all concert pieces. Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 is another postcard from Scandinavia, but one which presents an entirely different scene: this is music to stir the soul, steadily building to a uniquely beautiful finale inspired by a flight of swans at sunset.
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Janine Jansen plays Brahms | 3 May 2019
Brahms wrote his Violin Concerto while on a summer holiday in the Austrian Alps – and you can definitely tell. Few living violinists make it sing (and dance) quite like Janine Jansen. Enjoy it here alongside Bruckner’s Third symphony, itself an Alpine landscape in sound.
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Book more, pay less
Book 3–4 concerts and receive a 10% discount on ticket prices.
Book 5–7 concerts and receive a 15% discount on ticket prices.
Book 8-10 concerts and receive a 20% discount on ticket prices.
Book 11-14 concerts and receive a 25% discount on ticket prices.
