Spotlight Artist: Kirill Gerstein

Drift amid music of seductive illusion, by three turn-of-the-century composers.

The Programme 
‘It is pure music, conceived beyond the limits of reality, in the world of dreams,’ wrote a contemporary reviewer about Debussy’s Nocturnes. The first Nocturne conjures grey thunderclouds above the Seine, as a passing boat sounds its horn. The second is illuminated by a dazzling procession, and the third echoes with the voices of sirens, heard amid the moonlit waves of the sea.  

In Ravel’s dark, swaggering magic trick of a Piano Concerto, one hand playing comes to sound like two. And in Scriabin’s swirling, yearning symphonic poem, we move through fantasy to ecstasy.  

The Performers
Kirill Gerstein, a Spotlight Artist with the LSO in 2023/24, performs a remarkable feat of sleight-of-hand, while Susanna Mälkki and the LSO reveal the shining threads that tie these three works together. The London Symphony Chorus supplies enchanting song.  

‘All fire and air. The first time I heard it I played it over and over… For weeks I went about in a trance. Something had happened to me.’ – Writer Henry Miller on Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy