The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s much-loved Christmas Cracker concert returns to Cadogan Hall.

Featuring your favourite Christmas songs and a selection of sing-along carols, it’s the perfect way to get your festive season off to a joyful start.

The Orchestra is very pleased to be joined by conductor Stephen Bell, alongside special guest vocalists, Katie Birtill and Oliver Tompsett, for this magical Yuletide celebration that is guaranteed to fill you with festive cheer.

Marking their 40th anniversary, the legendary Italian ensemble brings the composer’s extraordinary word-setting and no-holds-barred music and poetry to life.

James McVinnie completes his residency in a recital with a difference: a rare chance to hear Bach played on both the piano and the organ by the same performer.

Now entering its 80th year, the eminent ensemble performs gloriously Romantic string quartets by Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

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.

This fascinating young artist brings his creative slant to cool-hued piano works by two contrasting composers, showing the piano’s capacity for maximum magic.

Join the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra as it returns to Cadogan Hall with a passionate programme filled with much-loved romantic pieces from the worlds of film, opera and classical music.

Whether you are looking for a romantic evening of music with that someone special, attending as part of a group or flying solo, make it a Valentine’s Day to remember with this captivating concert that is guaranteed to be the perfect date night for all.

When Johan Dalene won the Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition in 2019, one critic predicted that he’d become the greatest Swedish violinist in generations: a player with ‘a wondrous tone, an elegant straightforwardness and a freshness of utterance.’ We just say come and hear for yourself, as Dalene returns for his second Cadogan Hall concert as the RPO’s Artist-in-Residence. He joins forces with the powerhouse conductor Shiyeon Sung in Tchaikovsky’s hugely popular, gloriously tuneful Violin Concerto. First, though, experience the primal splendour of a Nordic dawn, as seen by Jean Sibelius, and then brace yourself for the unbridled life force of Carl Nielsen in full torrent. His extraordinary Second Symphony took its inspiration from a painting in a Danish pub – and you’d better believe it goes straight to the head!

‘Take me away… I have killed her: Carmen, my beloved!’ Bizet’s Carmen is one of the world’s most popular operas, and with good reason – it’s bursting with melodies that, once heard, are never forgotten. Tonight’s concert climaxes with an orchestral journey through this tale of doomed passion beneath the blazing Spanish sun: from the seductive Habanera to the swaggering Toreador’s Song, it’s just hit after hit after hit. But then, everything in this colourful programme is charged with drama. Stephanie Childress unleashes a whole evening of operatic passion, from Rossini’s showstopper of an overture (you already know how it goes!) to the imperial splendour of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Who needs singers – especially when we’ve got a soloist as charismatic as cellist Anastasia Kobekina in Tchaikovsky’s delightful Variations on a Rococo Theme?

Back by popular demand, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra returns for another Film Music Gala at the Royal Albert Hall. Join the Orchestra on the red carpet alongside conductor Stephen Bell and special guest vocalist  Louise Dearman for a night to remember, filled with music from your favourite Hollywood blockbusters.

Featuring songs from much-loved movies and musicals, including La La Land, The Sound of Music, Schindler’s List, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Lord of the Rings, E.T., The Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars, Jaws, Out of Africa, Titanic, Chariots of Fire, Aladdin, West Side Story, The Lion King… to name but a few.

Back by popular demand, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra returns for another Film Music Gala at the Royal Albert Hall. Join the Orchestra on the red carpet alongside conductor Stephen Bell and special guest vocalist Louise Dearman for a night to remember, filled with music from your favourite Hollywood blockbusters.

Featuring songs from much-loved movies and musicals, including La La Land, The Sound of Music, Schindler’s List, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Lord of the Rings, E.T., The Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars, Jaws, Out of Africa, Titanic, Chariots of Fire, Aladdin, West Side Story, The Lion King… to name but a few.

Frederic Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination. But there’s a burning fire beneath the poetry of his music: or as one contemporary put it ‘cannons hidden in flowers’. In the hands of Vasily Petrenko and Bruce Liu – winner of the 2021 International Chopin Competition – his Second Piano Concerto will blaze as never before: a passionate counterpart to two classics from 1940s America. Both Korngold and Bartók fled from fascism to the New World, and Korngold’s swashbuckling film score is practically a hymn to freedom. Bartók’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra, meanwhile, is more than just a multicoloured showcase for a great orchestra at the top of its game. It’s a struggle between darkness and light, crowned by a mighty shout of joy.

If you enjoy Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony (No.9), you’re going to love the one that he wrote back home in the heart of Bohemia. Hymn tunes, birdsong and folk dances; village bands, summer sunsets and blazing triumph – they’re all here, in what might be the single happiest symphony by any great composer (and, definitely, one of the most tuneful). For guest conductor Eduardo Strausser, it’s a natural way to end a concert that positively glows with Central European sunshine. The award-winning violinist Liya Petrova steps into the limelight in Korngold’s soaring Violin Concerto – composed in Hollywood by a composer with his heart in Vienna. And there’s a chance to discover a real neglected gem: the folk-inspired Suita Rustica by Vítězslava Kaprálová, who lit up Czech music between the wars.

Elgar’s Enigma Variations began as a parlour game – a series of musical portraits of the composer’s nearest and dearest. It grew into the warmest, tenderest and most stirring masterpiece in all of British music: who isn’t moved by the profound emotion of Nimrod? Few artists understand British music better than former English National Opera music director Martyn Brabbins, and tonight Enigma crowns an all-British programme that opens with the serenity of Vaughan Williams and stars another great champion of British music, pianist Mark Bebbington, in the Piano Concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss. It’s not heard all that often, but it’s an absolute knockout: an art deco blockbuster, written on the eve of the Second World War. The greatest piano concerto you’ve never heard? Judge for yourself…

As Hitler’s armies surrounded the city of Leningrad, and bombs rained down on a starving population, Dmitri Shostakovich sat down and – somehow - composed his Seventh Symphony. Written for massed battalions of musicians, this is music from the front line – a roar of defiance from an unbreakable city – and Vasily Petrenko’s recording was described by one critic as ‘devastating’. It’s a stupendous climax to a concert that’s all about struggle and resistance: whether it’s Sibelius defying Russian imperialism with a mighty hymn to his native Finland, or the poet Walt Whitman’s pleas for tolerance, set to music by the exiled Kurt Weill. Singing them today is the fabulous British baritone Roderick Williams: a born communicator at the heart of a truly epic programme.

‘I am the new Bacchus, pressing out glorious wine for the human spirit’ declared Ludwig van Beethoven. True, he wasn’t known for his modesty – but until you’ve heard his incredible Seventh Symphony in full, heart-pounding flight, you’ve never known just how intoxicating music can be. This is music that demands total commitment, body and soul and we can expect the young British conductor Adam Hickox to raise the roof tonight. First, though, he joins the RPO’s own Principal Trumpet Matthew Williams in the delightfully operatic concerto by Beethoven’s great friend Hummel – and ventures deep into the dark heart of the German forest in the Overture to Weber’s supernatural shocker Der Freischütz. The perfect opener to an evening of music to set the pulse racing.

Star pianist Yunchan Lim joins the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for this exclusive Royal Albert Hall performance. As the youngest-ever winner of the Gold Award at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022, he has since enjoyed invitations from leading ensembles and venues worldwide, resulting in dazzling performances that have been lauded by audiences and critics alike. His performances combine a prodigious technique with a depth and musical maturity far beyond his 20 years. Yunchan performs Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, a work in which Chopin took the piano and transformed it into the ultimate vehicle for the Romantic imagination, filled with a passion for his Polish homeland.  

In the second half of this concert, Music Director Vasily Petrenko transports us to the Alps on an epic musical journey that celebrates the glory of nature. Written for a vast orchestra of over 100 players, Richard Strauss’ thrilling tone poem takes us from sunrise to sunset on an expedition through shimmering glaciers and flowering meadows, where we will feel the full force of nature as the mountains are battered by a powerful storm. This is music that demands a grand setting, and they don’t come much grander than the magnificent Royal Albert Hall.   

Kindly supported by RPO President, Aline Foriel-Destezet 

Heralded as one of the world’s finest musicians, legendary violinist Maxim Vengerov takes to the Royal Albert Hall stage with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a performance that is not to be missed. His distinguished career as both a violinist and conductor already spans more than four decades, and his glittering collection of awards, from Grammys to Classical BRITs, gives just a hint of the magical performance that this great master will treat us to. Described as ‘a virtuoso at the peak of his powers’ (The Guardian), Maxim is the perfect soloist for Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, a piece suffused with the atmosphere of his Finnish homeland, a nation which was still yearning for independence. 

Music Director Vasily Petrenko concludes this concert with Stravinsky’s dramatic musical illustration of the Russian fairytale, The Firebird. The ballet music, as you might expect, is extremely theatrical, from its menacing opening that foretells the trouble ahead to the ethereal strings that conjure the magic of the enchanted Firebird. 

Kindly supported by RPO President, Aline Foriel-Destezet 

Don’t be misled by the title: for Tchaikovsky, ‘Pathétique’ meant ‘full of emotion’ and when he composed his autobiographical final symphony… well, let’s just say that he didn’t hold back. Soaring romance, desperate tragedy and brilliant celebration: it’s all here, in a symphony that leaves no heartstring untugged, right up to its devastating and unforgettable conclusion. If you’ve heard our guest conductor Antonello Manacorda in action at the Royal Opera House, you’ll know that he aims straight for the heart of everything he conducts. So expect elegance and joy in Mozart’s exuberant Overture to The Magic Flute, and pure energy when he joins RPO Artist-in-Residence Johan Dalene to play the piece with which Dalene shot to fame in 2019: the powerful Violin Concerto by Carl Nielsen. It’s possible that no one alive plays it better.

The wind rises, and waves smash against the North Sea coast of England. The earth shakes, as the very ground beneath our feet threatens to give way. And, in 19th-century Russia, a chemist with a gift for music, dreams of ancient times and exotic tribes, and creates sheer sonic alchemy. Music can show us the world in magical new ways, and as conductor Gemma New brings the RPO’s season to a close, she’s chosen four pieces that stir the imagination even while they thrill the senses. Britten’s seascapes, Borodin’s oriental fantasies and Victoria Borisova-Ollas’ tribute to the imagination of Salman Rushdie will make a vivid setting for the playfulness and wit of Prokofiev’s brilliant Third Piano Concerto – played by young pianist Daniel Ciobanu for whom every performance is a new adventure.