Taking on the roles of both conductor and soloist, Nikolaj Znaider concludes his Mozart series on LSO Live with the great composer's first three concertos for the violin. While they were penned before he was even out of his teens, the music of Mozart's violin concertos is as characteristically elegant and uplifting as anything he would ever write. Znaider teases out the wit and charm in these delightful pieces, leading the virtuoso players of the London Symphony Orchestra as Mozart would have done, from the violin.

In 1781, the Zong - a British slave ship - left Ghana with twice the number it was designed to carry, bound for Jamaica. The ship's owners claimed that drinking water was running low, and ordered the crew to throw more than 130 living enslaved people overboard. Over 200 years later, Jamaica has become a place of significance for Witter-Johnson. As a young child, she often spent her six-week summer holiday visiting extended family in Jamaica, taking trips to a favorite beach on the south coast. It was here that she witnessed a terrible fatal accident at one end of the beach, yet at the other end, a baptism and celebration was taking place. Witter-Johnson explores this spectrum of events tied together by their central themes of ancestry, family and the ocean, noting that even amidst the darkness of death, there is still room for joy. Combining alternative R&B with classical, and with influences from soul, hip hop and reggae, Ayanna Witter-Johnson is the definition of an eclectic soul. Through her work with the LSO, she forged a friendship with LSO Principal Percussionist, Neil Percy, which became the starting point for the recording. "His enthusiasm for my music moves me to tears and was the catalyst behind our first collaboration and subsequent commission, Forever. The organic development of this project is something I will treasure forever, because above all, I have felt the fullest support in expressing myself exactly as I am, and that goes beyond words." This album showcases Witter-Johnson's special partnership with the LSO Percussion Ensemble, where her choice of rhythms and harmony and use of percussion all have symbolic meaning in relation to the songs' deep inspiration.

Since the London Symphony Orchestra's foundation in 1904, the music and spirit of Sir Edward Elgar have lived in the Orchestra's blood. Elgar conducted the LSO during it's very first 1904-5 season of concerts, and the Orchestra's first Principal Conductor, Hans Richter, was a devoted champion of the composer's music both at home and abroad. Combining a remastered collection of the LSO's finest Elgar recordings, this album demonstrates the enduring significance of the composer's work for the LSO, and showcases performances by conductors Barry Tuckwell, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Sir Colin Davis and Sir Antonio Pappano. The album features critically acclaimed, award-winning recordings of Elgar's Symphonies Nos 1-3, alongside orchestral favorites including Elgar's "Enigma" Variations, Cello Concerto, Imperial March and Pomp & Circumstance Marches.

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Opera Recording!

Melodious and charming, The Cunning Little Vixen is a work rooted in Czech history and folk music; a sentimental journey through the cycles of life. For Sir Simon Rattle, it’s a deeply personal and emotional work. "It’s the piece that made me want to become an opera conductor... and still one of the pieces that reduces me to tears more easily than any other," says the LSO's Music Director. Towering fanfares open Janá?ek’s Sinfonietta, an ode to the composer’s hometown of Brno in the now Czech Republic. It’s a portrait composed for a national celebration of Slavic culture, with Janá?ek’s love of musical tradition evident in dancing strings and celebratory brass.

François-Xavier Roth, Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, displays his deep affinity with the music of Debussy and Ravel on his latest LSO Live album. A fascination with his Spanish heritage would be a recurring theme in many of Ravel's creations. Mysterious melodies weave delicately throughout his early work Rapsodie espagnole, punctuated by bursts of Spanish-inspired fanfares and Habanera dance rhythms. The voluptuous flute opening of the Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune immediately conjures a world of luxurious fantasy, weaving through the music's changing scenes with effortless spontaneity. Every instrument adds something unique, and the whole work appears to float free of form and convention. In La mer, Debussy tells the story of the eternal odyssey of the ocean. He sails through storm and calm, wind and rain, in music that rises and falls with the rhythms of the sea. The score is so vivid that you can almost smell sea salt and see the crests of the waves.

Conductor François-Xavier Roth leads the London Symphony Orchestra on the third album in the Panufnik Legacies series, which showcases new music by some of the most exciting young composers working in the UK today. All of the composers featured on this recording are alumni of the LSO Discovery Panufnik Composers Scheme, which offers six composers each year the opportunity to write for a world-class symphony orchestra, guided by renowned composer Colin Matthews.

The Panufnik Legacies III contains world premiere recordings of compositions by Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Ewan Campbell, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Donghoon Shin, Alex Roth, Matthew Sergeant, Patrick Giguère, Sasha Siem, Bethan Morgan-Williams, Michael Taplin, Benjamin Ashby and Joanna Lee.

This recording has been generously supported by The Boltini Trust. The LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme is generously supported by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Gianandrea Noseda and the London Symphony Orchestra continue their Shostakovich cycle with a pairing of the iconic Fifth Symphony alongside the composer's First. Few pieces of classical music have been the subject of so much debate and discussion as the Fifth Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. Following the 'justified criticism' of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk the Fifth marked a turning point in his career, after which he balanced an even more precarious position as an artist under Stalin’s brutal regime. Completed by the composer at just 18 years old, Shostakovich’s First Symphony propelled him into the international spotlight. Breathtakingly unpredictable, the piece charts a course through soundscapes of blazing passion, melancholy introspection and caustic humour.

This album combines three of Britten's enduringly popular, yet vastly distinctive works. Sir Simon Rattle leads us on an unexpected journey through this diverse collection of masterpieces. Written shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Sinfonia da Requiem meditates in part on the political populism which had, for the second time in just a few decades, plunged the world in to an existential crisis. In this piece, Britten's rich, yearning harmonies reveal a sombre and dramatic warning of the cost of conflict. From the darkness of war, we move towards the light with Britten's choral Spring Symphony. With it's mysterious reimagining of traditional English folk song and verse, the work depicts the gradual reawakening of the natural world when winter ebbs away, and spring begins to triumph. Britten let his imagination catch fire in The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. This brilliantly original showpiece is one of the composer's best-known pieces, and draws the album to a close.

The second album in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Schumann series with the London Symphony Orchestra travels from glorious fanfare to dream-like passages with the lively Spring and Rhenish symphonies.

From the dramatic first trumpet-call which awakens the frozen landscape, the First Symphony is a celebration of spring. It moves through the season and a gruff folksong Scherzo until finally a jubilant conclusion dances into summer.

Desperate, heartfelt and elegant, the Manfred Overture opens with an urgent impetus that only increases through the work, displaying the intense strife which lies ahead for its protagonist. Schumann’s Third is one of the composer’s most impressive, painting a euphoric picture of the German Rhineland in broad Beethovenian style and closing with an exhilarating finale.

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REVIEW:

He brings the values of his period- instrument performances to both works and to the grandiose Manfred Overture, a Byronic tone poem in all but name. The LSO players respond with verve and elan to his impulsive baton.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Following their award-winning Mendelssohn cycle, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony Orchestra embark on a new journey through the symphonies of Robert Schumann.

Gardiner feels the Schumann symphonies are criticised unfairly and with these recordings he is on a mission to dispel the cobweb of myths around these symphonic masterpieces.

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REVIEW:

The LSO respond with elan to the bracing textures, confounding the cliché that Schumann “couldn’t orchestrate”. Gardiner chooses the 1841 version of the D minor work, No 4, which the LSO play as if discovering it anew.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Composed against a cataclysmic backdrop of Stalinist oppression and the Second World War, Shostakovich's Symphony No.8 is a deeply affecting poem of suffering. The composer described it as, ''an attempt to reflect the terrible tragedy of war,'' and it contains some of the most terrifying music he ever wrote. Here, Gianandrea Noseda conducts the London Symphony Orchestra with intensity and understanding, allowing the music to tell its own story as it travels from darkness into light, yearning more for peace than for victory.

STRAVINSKY / LIGETI / BERG / WEBERN