Friday 28 February 2020, 7.30 PM
Royal Festival Hall
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd
Lambeth
London SE1 8XX
Not all revolutions are noisy. Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto begins with the piano all alone and playing softly – the kind of enigma that the American philosopher-pianist Jeremy Denk simply loves to explore. And in this latest instalment of 2020 Vision, conductor Osmo Vänskä follows it up with nearly as many questions as answers. From 1905 there’s a self-proclaimedly ‘heroic’ symphony with a remarkably poetic soul and, from 2005, Krzysztof Penderecki’s hauntingly beautiful tribute to another great Pole in an age of oppression and doubt: music that – as Beethoven once put it – comes from the heart and goes straight to the heart.
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4
Krzysztof Penderecki Chaconne in memory of John Paul II
Enescu Symphony No. 1
Osmo Vänskä conductor
Jeremy Denk piano
London Philharmonic Orchestra