Rachmaninoff: Inside Out, Royal Festival Hall

The London Philharmonic are paying due respects to the titan Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in its series Rachmaninoff: Inside Out - a wonderful collision of a brilliant orchestra with stunning, accessible music.
In this installment, Rachmaninoff is sandwiched between two other greats of the roughly the same period: Englishman Ralph Vaughan Williams and fellow Russian Romanticist Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Soloist Nikolai Lugansky's masterful pianism will accompany the LPO.
The Rachmaninoff Fourth Piano Concerto is the least known of the composer’s and among the least typical of his entire oeuvre. Perhaps it is for this reason that the concerto has been partnered with work of others rather than his own.A version was written in 1926, but revised significantly several times, until a definitive version emerged in 1941; the one to be played here. The piece is fiendishly difficult, reflecting the increasingly progressive tastes of the composer; we hear the jazz rhythms with which he surrounded himself, and the more dissonant harmonic language of his contemporaries Bartok and Stravinsky. The work is still a great one, and safe in the hands of Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky; perhaps the best Rachmaninoff pianist alive today (listen to his recordings of The Paganini Variations for a taster - masterful!)
Opening will be Vaughan Williams 1910 Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis - an immensely popular work whose dreamy, hymn like quality will match with Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony of 1866, nicknamed Winter Dreams. It’s a beautiful work by the young composer - one that cost him emotionally more than any other he wrote. He struggled to finish it, battling insanity on the side, but thankfully it now stands as an emblem of Russianness in music - no doubt a great inspiration to Rachmaninoff.