The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO)

Programme:
Rimsky-Korsakov Russian Easter Festival Overture
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5

Kazakh pianist Alim Beisembayev shot to international fame when winning the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021 and also taking home the medici.tv Audience Prize. Not long after, he won worldwide acclaim by making his BBC Proms debut with only two days’ notice. He’s an artist who thrives on big repertoire and they don’t come much bigger than Prokofiev’s 2nd Piano Concerto, the centrepiece of this Royal Liverpool Philharmonic programme. Premiered in 1913, Prokofiev’s Concerto vividly embodies the energy of the machine age: one commentator described it moving ‘with the relentless force and fluidity of a speeding locomotive.’ The soloist is continually pushed to the limit, whether in its lush and expansive theme or its finger-crunching cadenza.

Bookending Prokofiev’s concerto are two Romantic Russian classics. Rimsky Korsakov’s Russian Easter Festival Overture shares the sweeping melodies and glorious orchestration of his Scheherazade, painting a vivid picture, in the composer’s words, of ‘the unbridled pagan-religious merry-making of the morn of Easter Sunday.’ Considered to be very progressive when first performed – dangerously so in the opinion of some critics – Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony continues Tchaikovsky’s preoccupation with fate and deploys his peerless melodic gifts to stunning effect in a heartfelt slow movement, one of his greatest waltzes and an unstoppable marching finale.