Antonio Pappano and Leif Ove Andsnes Perform with the London Symphony

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Friday 6 & Sunday 8 March 2009, 7.30pm, Barbican

RACHMANINOFF Piano Concerto No 3
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No 6 Pathétique

Antonio PappanoAntonio Pappano (pictured) has a close relationship with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducts the Orchestra every year. He is currently the Musical Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and is the youngest conductor to have ever been invited to this position. Previously, he has been Musical Director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels and the Norwegian Opera. He has also been principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Leif Ove Andsnes has been referred to as “an eminently sensual musician, an artist capable of grace and introspection” by the Financial Times. In addition to giving recitals and playing concertos each season in the world’s leading concert halls and with the all the foremost orchestras, Andsnes is an avid chamber musician who joins select colleagues each summer at Norway’s Risør Festival of Chamber Music, of which he is co-artistic director. The New York Times has placed Risør amongst the top 10 musical events of the year.

Written in 1909 for his own concert tour of the USA, Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is designed to dazzle and showcase the soloist in rich bravura. Equally important is the musical and emotional intensity through which Rachmaninoff’s audiences heard an almost diabolic romanticism. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ symphony is subtle yet famously harrowing. It is hard not to hear a premonition of the composer’s own fate in the music: he died just days after conducting the first performance in 1893.

Tickets to Barbican concerts: £7 - £32
Secure online booking at lso.co.uk (£1.50 booking fee)

Box office: 020 7638 8891
   open 9am – 8pm Mon-Sat,
   11am – 8pm Sun (£2.50 booking fee)

In person at the Advance Box Office in the Barbican centre (Mon-Sat 9am – 9pm; Sun 12pm – 9pm)

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