The Rite of Spring

Music thrives on change: and for centuries, great composers have channelled the spirit of their age into music that shocked some and gripped others – but which has never lost its power to thrill. Stravinsky’s taboo-smashing ballet provides the final blast tonight, as Vasily Petrenko conducts this explosive opening concert of the RPO’s new season. But first he explores the rich, strange and sometimes violent new sounds that Alban Berg created in the Vienna of Klimt and Mahler. And he joins the superb British pianist Paul Lewis in a masterpiece that broke all the rules and still sounds just as exciting today. It’s the concerto they call the ‘Emperor’: daring, majestic and filled from beginning to end with the irrepressible genius of Ludwig van Beethoven.