London Philharmonic Orchestra

Tchaikovsky’s heartrending symphonic fantasy Francesca da Rimini is a moving slice of semi-conscious musical autobiography: Tchaikovsky was no stranger to unhappiness in love, and in his musical retelling of Dante’s tale of Francesca’s infidelity and casting into hell, he seems to pour all his own sorrow and pain.

Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto is a lyrical masterpiece that finds the composer enjoying musical inventiveness. Formed of just one long movement with distinct sections, the concerto is sensitive and expressive, with the piano sometimes leading the way, and at others playing accompanist to the orchestra.

When Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis had its first performance in Gloucester Cathedral, the quartet of string soloists played from the opposite end of the nave from the full orchestra. The notes played and the echoes and washes of sound that follow weave magical, spellbinding music.

Dvorák’s set of variations on a Czech folk melody comes together piece by piece towards a final explosion as the theme is united with what feels like its rightful alignment of harmony and orchestration - showing the composer's growing confidence and imagination as he entered his most creative period.

The orchestra is pleased to welcome back one of the 2007/2008 participants in the International Conductors’ Academy of the Allianz Cultural Foundation, Benjamin Northey, to conduct these four great masterworks.