March, Music, Contemporary

Sarah Chang is the featured soloist in a true American classic: Barber's Violin Concerto, which appears directly after another one, the same composer's mournful Adagio for Strings. Lastly, Copland's Symphony No 3 is conducted by David Alan Miller of the Albany Symphony Orchestra.

Sarah Chang is the soloist in Barber's Violin Concerto, plus there's Tsontakis' Let the River Be Unbroken, a musical panorama the American Civil War, and Copland's rousing Symphony No 3, as stirring a piece of post-war optimism as has ever been written, climaxing as it does with the ever-popular Fanfare for the Common…

Miss this one and you may not get another chance for years: first there's the UK premiere of very hip young US composer Sean Shepherd's Blue Blazes, then Gershwin's Piano Concerto with soloist Freddy Kempff, and to round it all off in high style, Charles Ives' seldom-played Symphony No 2, one of those big ol' American…

Kaija Saariaho is one of the great composers of our time, and this concert features the UK premiere of her Circle Map. Jack Liebeck is the soloist in Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 1, and the last item on the bill is Ravel's celebrated orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Susanna Mälkki conducts.

Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie is one of the most popular pieces of post-WWII classical music, and with good reason. It's a whole recital in itself, mixing dissonant panic with lush romance, and jazzy fanfares with what was, in the late 1940s, the very latest thing in electronic music in the form of the ondes…

Charles Ives: The Alcotts (3rd movement) from Piano Sonata No.2 `Concord' arr. Henry Brant for orchestra John Adams: Absolute Jest Interval Hector Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique Michael Tilson Thomas, one of the biggest personalities in American music today, conducts two concerts with the orchestra of which he…

Selections from Dvořák's two sets of Slavonic Dances frame Ligeti's Violin Concerto, featuring the great Tasmin Little as soloist, and Haydn's Symphony No 31 'Horn Signal'. Robin Ticciati conducts.