London Philharmonic Orchestra: War and (troubled) peace

Music has always had a place in war – but not always as joyously as in the 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky's irresistibly over-the-top musical celebration of Napoleon's defeat in Russia. For when Beethoven heard that Napoleon had abandoned the ideals of liberty and equality, he angrily scratched out the dedication of his Third Symphony – leaving the music free to tell its story with an energy that would redefine Western music. Two centuries on it’s just as gripping. Alain Altinoglu conducts, and Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the soloist in a work that dramatises a far more private but no less meaningful struggle: Schumann's only violin concerto.