Valery Gergiev, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Photo Alberto Venzago, courtesy LSO

Gergiev's Rachmaninov

When: 20 - 21 Sep 2008

Where: Barbican Centre

Opening Hours: Sat 7.30pm; Sun 3.30pm & 7pm

Phone: +44 (0) 20 7588 1116

Fax: +44 (0) 20 7374 0127

E-mail: bookings@lso.co.uk

Web site: London Symphony Orchestra Website

After last season's Mahler cycle, the London Symphony Orchestra's principal conductor Valery Gergiev opens his Emigré season at the Barbican Hall with a three-concert Rachmaninov cycle over one weekend.

You can hear all three of Rachmaninov's symphonies on one day (Sunday 21 September), as well as the Third and Fourth Piano Concertos played by Alexei Volodin. In later concerts in the series Gergiev also includes music by other 20th-century composers who found refuge in the West, including Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Bartók and Schoenberg.

Rachmaninov's first two symphonies were composed before the Russian Revolution. The First, in D minor Op 13, was given such an inadequate première (conductor Glazunov was drunk!) that it stopped Rachmaninov in his compositional tracks for two years. The Second in E minor Op 27, following his musical rehabilitation after the Second Piano Concerto, saw a much more confident composer, while the Third in A minor Op 44 was the hard-won product of his American period.

On Saturday night, the Third Piano Concerto in D minor Op 30 is paired with the Second Symphony, while Sunday matinée brings together the First and Third Symphonies before the festival ends on Sunday evening with the late Fourth Piano Concerto in G minor Op 40 prefacing a repeat of the Second Symphony.

The London Symphony Orchestra was fashioned as a self-governing entity after a number of players seceded from the Queen's Hall Orchestra. Hans Richter conducted the first concert (still at the Queen's Hall) on 9 June 1904, and remained principal conductor until 1911. Sir Edward Elgar took over for a year and remained a regular conductor for the next 20 years. After the war the orchestra was led by the likes of Josef Krips, Pierre Monteux, Istvan Kertész, André Previn, Claudio Abbado and Michael Tilson Thomas.

Sir Colin Davis' eleven-year tenure - during which the orchestra started its budget-priced LSO Live label, celebrated its centenary and opened its education facility, St Luke's - was followed, in January 2007 with the appointment of Valery Gergiev as principal conductor, while Sir Colin became the orchestra's president.

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