Glinka, Britten, Shostakovich

Glinka’s rollicking Overture from the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila is one of the best-known orchestral show pieces. Rapid, driving rhythms and lyrical, courtly melodies open the curtain on a world of sorcerers, spells and swashbuckling romance – thrilling from the very first bar.

Britten premiered his own Piano Concerto in London in 1938, at the age of just 24, in a blazing display of bravura. This was Britten exuberant and unafraid. The reception was mixed, simply because the audience had literally never heard anything like it before. It is unashamedly virtuosic and unsparing in its demands of the soloist, and our soloist, Jian Liu, is more than up for the challenge when he joins CSO for this performance.

When the teenage Shostakovich presented his graduation project to the Petrograd Conservatory, he hardly expected to take the international music world by storm. Achieving nearly overnight international fame, his first symphony remains one of his most popular works. Constantly unpredictable, slipping easily between biting humour and tragic foreboding, it reveals a precocious command of orchestral colour and contrast that still keeps audiences on the edge of their seats a century later.

With thanks to CSO Soloist Partner PKF Goldsmith Fox, and CSO Library Supporters Gloria Street (Shostakovich) and Doris Barnard & Mark Hickman (Britten).

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First release tickets on sale: 1 – 30 November (10% off full-price tickets, excludes Lamb & Hayward Curator's Series)

General sale: From 1 December