RLPO Live at the Albert Hall

Classical music doesn't get any classier than when the RLPO raises the roof at the Albert Hall...

WHEN PHIL MET ALBERT:

Don’t you dare say there’s nothing on the telly this weekend. Check out BBC 2 tomorrow night and cheer on one city team we can all get behind: the resurgent and thrilling RLPO under the baton of the only Russian we know of who’s not being traded in a tit-for-tat Conductor/Spy exchange. Anyway, he lives in Claughton. They don’t do that sort of thing there.

Vasily Petrenko and the men and women of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra raised the roof this week when they opened this season’s Proms concerts: the press loved it, the audience loved it, and now it’s your turn to wallow in the thrill of it all.

Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto was the perfect showcase for pianist Simon Trpceski - you might, like our Mums, know it better as ‘that lovely music from Brief Encounter’. No matter, it’ll bring a lump to your throat and a tear to your eye all the same. Rousing stuff.

Of course, as it’s Petrenko, you’re not leaving without a double-helping of the Russian giants, and there’s Tchaikovsky’s troubled Manfred Symphony, a tale of lost love, torment and conflict.

There was a time, not so long ago, when that score would have perfectly soundtracked life at the Phil.

No longer.

As this exhilarating performance proved - there is nothing to discover up Hope Street these days than pure, sweet harmony, and more than a dash of romance too…

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Miracle On The Mersey
7pm, 24 July, BBC Two
www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2010/

Photography: Mark McNulty

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