Santtu Conducts Beethoven & Strauss by Beethoven, Strauss, Nuo (2023/2023), Dirigentas Santtu-Matias Rouvali, South Bank Centre, London, United Kingdom

Three superstars join Santtu and the Philharmonia for our season finale, featuring Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. A concert featuring just one of these fantastic soloists would be great – here’s your chance to hear all three of them performing together. They pool their talents for Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. Most likely composed for Beethoven’s royal pupil the Archduke Rudolf, this is much full of suitably aristocratic charm and sparkle. To end our 2022/23 season, Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali has chosen Strauss’s musical autobiography, entitled with considerable self-confidence A Hero’s Life. The piece opens with swaggering horns – “quite the thing to express heroism”, as Strauss wrote to a friend. We hear a tender portrait of ‘the hero’s companion’, and vividly-drawn depictions of his struggles. At last our hero finds fulfilment and the music comes to a serene and radiant end.