Visions and Utterances | London Philharmonic Orchestra

George Walker believed that true abstraction is impossible in music. ‘Sound is produced from vibration. Vibrations are felt.’ What music has to say is real – and it can be said in no other way. That could mean Mason Bates fusing dying glaciers into neon orchestral textures; it could mean Missy Mazzoli raising a shining citadel of sound amid the smokestacks of the Rust Belt. Or it could mean Rebecca Saunders’s new piano concerto, played by the soloist who premiered it in Switzerland last summer. These are the sounds of today in all their diversity: urgent, sometimes startling, but always with a true story to tell. You just need to listen.