Moscow Nights

Glinka Overture, Ruslan and Ludmilla
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 Alondra de la Parra conductor
Benjamin Grosvenor piano 

There’s a good reason why Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto is one of the world’s favourite classics (and we’re not just talking about Brief Encounter). Like any true classic, it always sounds new – and in the hands of a pianist as insightful and as skilled as the young British superstar Benjamin Grosvenor it’ll never have sounded grander. Conductor Alondra de la Parra will bring her signature verve to an all-Russian programme that begins with Glinka’s firecracker of an overture, and ends in the triumph of Tchaikovsky’s unashamedly autobiographical Fifth Symphony: music that the composer wanted to be played 'with passion and desire'