Lisa Batiashvili plays Tchaikovsky

“For me, the sound of the violin reflects the soul,” says Lisa Batiashvili.

Tchaikovsky may well have agreed. He wrote his Violin Concerto on holiday by Lake Geneva with the young student he hoped would premiere it, and poured equal parts emotion and virtuosity into his fiercely difficult and beautiful score. This afternoon it’s in the hands of exceptional violinist Lisa Batiashvili, whose last performance with the Philharmonia was acclaimed as ‘compelling from the very first bar’ (The Guardian).

William Walton’s First Symphony is one of the most enduringly popular works by a British composer, and one of the great symphonies of the twentieth century. Walton first conjures up vast landscapes tinged with the dark undercurrents of the interwar years – and, according to some of his biographers, the anguish of a broken relationship. But the confidence and grandeur fans of Walton’s coronation music or film scores will recognise come to the fore in the thrilling finale.