Royal College of Music launches autumn season with More Music concert series
Tuesday 6 August 2019
The Royal College of Music has launched its autumn season with a concert series designed to showcase the exceptional talent of RCM musicians.
In support of the More Music: Reimagining the Royal College of Music Campaign, the More Music concert series offers audiences the opportunity to experience some of the nation’s favourite repertoire performed by the musical stars of the future. Highlights of the series include Beethoven’s Symphony No 5 on 3 October, Elgar’s Enigma Variations on 25 October and Prokofiev’s score to Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 war film Alexander Nevsky on 14 and 15 November. On 17 October, Sir Thomas Allen, the RCM’s Artist in Residence, joins the RCM Symphony Orchestra to narrate Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, a tribute to victims of the Holocaust.
Elsewhere, the season celebrates the RCM’s international outlook. On 28 November, members of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (COE) return to the College to perform Schubert’s Symphony No 9 ‘The Great’ alongside RCM musicians. On 22 October, the RCM Wind Orchestra collaborates with the Orchestre du Conservatoire du Paris to perform Stravinsky and the world premiere of Laurent Durupt’s No Border Concerto for Oboe. Later in the season, esteemed American conductor Steven Sloane leads RCM string players in a collaborative performance with musicians from the Royal Conservatoire The Hague, Codarts Rotterdam and the Universität der Künste Berlin.
The RCM welcomes many renowned musicians from around the globe to give public masterclasses this season. Conductor Bernard Haitink leads current and past RCM conductors through symphonies by Haydn and Mahler on 11 October, while Maxim Vengerov, the RCM’s Polonsky Visiting Professor of Violin, works with RCM string players in an orchestral masterclass on 8 November. Masterclasses are also given by John Lill, Alina Ibragimova, Stefan Dohr and Maxim Rysanov. The Harlem Quartet, the RCM’s Quartet in Residence, return with their fusion of classical and jazz on 9 December and Peter Beets joins the RCM Big Band on 28 September for an evening of jazz piano.
The annual RCM International Festival of Viols returns this season, offering two days of masterclasses and lectures plus two evening concerts. This year’s special guests include Sarah Cunningham, international soloist and viola da gamba teacher at The Julliard School in New York, and Chicago-based viol consort The Spirit of Gambo. The ensemble performs a programme of works from John Jenkins on 18 November and Sarah Cunningham closes the festival with an unaccompanied programme on 19 November.
In the 50th anniversary year of the first man on the moon, the RCM Opera Studio stages Haydn’s entertaining comedy Il mondo della luna. Written in 1750 with a libretto by Venetian playwright Carlo Goldini, this opera buffa centres on wannabe space cadet Buonafede, who longs for a lunar lifestyle and eventually swallowing an elixir to transport him to the moon. Directing this season’s opera is William Renton, who has 25 years of experience directing opera all over Europe.
Booking for the RCM’s autumn season is open now for RCM Friends. General booking opens on Wednesday 14 August 2019. For full details of what’s on this autumn click here. Alternatively, call the RCM Box Office on 020 7591 4314 or visit the RCM in person on Prince Consort Road, SW7.
