These events have sadly all passed, but please keep an eye out for any future opportunities or get in touch to find out more or to book your school trip to the Royal Albert Hall (hello@theschooltrip.co.uk).
There is nothing quite like a live orchestral concert to bring the music of the curriculum to life. School group tickets from just £5 each (including leaders)!
About the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s (RPO) mission to enrich lives through orchestral experiences that are uncompromising in their excellence and inclusive in their appeal, places it at the forefront of music-making in the UK and internationally.
Typically performing approximately 200 concerts a year and with a worldwide live and online audience of more than 60 million people, the Orchestra embraces a broad repertoire that enables it to reach the most diverse audience of any British symphony orchestra.
Whilst artistic integrity remains paramount, the RPO is unafraid to push boundaries and is equally at home recording video game, film and television soundtracks and working with pop stars, as it is performing the great symphonic repertoire.
Upcoming Events: Journeys of Discovery with Vasily Petrenko
Journey through the many facets of the human character, with music as your guide. These concerts are a great way to cover vocal music, instrumental music and the concerto through time as part of your music syllabi.
Mahler Symphony No. 3
Thu 27 Apr | Royal Albert Hall
Riotous, hallucinatory, extraordinary: Mahler’s Third Symphony knows no bounds, taking us from the smallest flower to the mystery of divine love.
Mahler’s famous quote about ‘embracing the world’ in his symphonies finds its fullest expression in this, his longest symphony. In six movements he charts the evolution of nature and mankind. The elemental power of summer is set against the delicacy of the natural world. And the dark night of the soul is broken by the sounds of angels and a ‘great summons’ to love more deeply than ever before.
A symphony filled with music of life-enhancing physicality and breathtaking melodic beauty, it is a story of such breadth and ambition that only Mahler could have dreamed of it, let alone write it.
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Prokofiev Violin Concerto No.2 & Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
Wed 10 May 2023, 7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall
Music to transport you into a fantastical world of dreams and nightmares.
Higdon’s blue cathedral is a deeply moving aural experience, both an enthralling concerto for orchestra and a memorial to her recently deceased brother. The listener is beckoned in by ethereal bells before being swept into a cathedral-like space that invites the ‘ecstatic expansion of the soul.’
If you like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, then you will love his Second Violin Concerto that was written in the same period. It shares the same deeply romantic melodies and youthful energy of the ballet, but with surprises around each corner.
Berlioz’s zany Symphonie Fantastique is equally unpredictable, hallucinatory, even unhinged at times. The work’s protagonist has been spurned by the woman he adores and so chases her in a series of dreams that get ever more desperate. Berlioz captures everything along the way, from gentle yearning to feverish, overwhelming passion.
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Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 & Shostakovich Symphony No.8
Wed 7 Jun | Royal Festival Hall
chaikovsky’s effusive concerto is paired with a symphony that pulls no punches.
Tchaikovsky laboured long and hard on his First Piano Concerto, revising it three times. The result was a work that has stood the test of time, shooting its arrow direct to the heart. All sentiments are there: fury, serenity, joy, and – of course – passion.
Shostakovich’s response to the unfathomable losses of the Second World War was to write a work that did not shy away from the ugliness and chaos of the indiscriminate suffering that had been unleashed. As is so often the case with his music, listening to the Eighth Symphony offers a catharsis, moving from unrelenting pressure to finding final release.
‘All that is dark and evil rots away, and beauty triumphs,’ wrote the composer. And yet the hallmark of Shostakovich is his ambiguity. After the pain and suffering, can anything ever be the same again?
