LSO Artist Portrait: Bertrand Chamayou | London Symphony Orchestra

A playful concerto offers a boost to your mood, and a symphony reaches for hope in the midst of war.

Like a ringmaster, Ravel sets his Piano Concerto in G major in motion with a flick of the whip. Here come Basque folk melodies, Spanish panache and American jazz. The fascinating melody in the middle section was a painstaking high-wire act for the composer. Ravel wrote, ‘That flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!’

Vaughan Williams was once taught by Ravel. His sophisticated, original Fifth Symphony deeply moved audiences who heard it at its premiere during World War II. Its bittersweet melodies and transcendent climax seem to offer listeners a vision of future peace.

Like Ravel, Bertrand Chamayou once studied at the Paris Conservatoire. His fresh, assertive interpretation of the Piano Concerto – part of a wider LSO Artist Portrait series – makes it sound newly written.

Sir Antonio Pappano and the LSO follow up their stunning pre-pandemic performances of Vaughan Williams’s Fourth and Sixth Symphonies with this magnificent take on his popular Fifth.