Shakespeare400: Anniversary concert | London Philharmonic Orchestra

I have had him in my hands from my earliest youth’, said Giuseppe Verdi of William Shakespeare, ‘I have read and reread him continually.’ Verdi wasn’t alone. Shakespeare’s body of plays has exercised more influence over composers and musicians than anything else in literature bar the Bible. This concert opens with music from Verdi’s setting of Othello – probably the most bold and significant music he would write – and closes with music from his final, ebullient masterpiece Falstaff. In between come orchestral and operatic settings from Britten, Mendelssohn, Berlioz, Prokofiev and Adès, each filled with character and overflowing with drama. Vladimir Jurowski conducts the music, which is interspersed with readings from the plays directed by Simon Callow, as we mark the 400th year since the death of the greatest playwright that ever lived.