Romantic Journeys by Mendelssohn, Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, Fra (2023/2023), Dirigent Patrick Hahn, Congress Theatre, Eastbourne, United Kingdom

An afternoon of Mendelssohn and Rachmaninoff, featuring visions of Scotland and the ‘Everest of Piano Concertos’. On a summer evening in Edinburgh, amid the ruins of Holyrood Castle, the young Felix Mendelssohn imagined the first notes of his ‘Scottish’ Symphony. It’s all there in the music, and in the hands of guest conductor Patrick Hahn, it’ll spring vividly to life: highland mists, warring clans, and melodies as heady as a single malt. And then comes the piece they call the ‘Everest of Piano Concertos’, a concerto so overwhelming (and so romantic) that even Rachmaninoff himself had to practise twice as hard before playing it. But our soloist Tom Borrow is the kind of young artist who makes anything seem possible.