Artist Portrait: Antoine Tamestit | London Symphony Orchestra

Robin Ticciati conducts Brahms, and Antoine Tamestit continues his Artist Portrait with Walton’s Viola Concerto – music born of youth and age, but united by passion.

When the young William Walton premiered his Viola Concerto in 1927, it caused a Europe-wide sensation: a composer in his twenties, taking a neglected instrument and writing for it with unprecedented imagination and power. Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, meanwhile, would be his last – but he wasn’t going peacefully into the night, and every note burns with creative fire.

In other words, this is a concert that unites youthful genius with music drawn from a profound engagement with life. At the centre of it all – and the subject of our Artist Portrait this season - is viola virtuoso Antonie Tamestit, renewing his artistic partnership with conductor Robin Ticciati. Two artists on the same page, in music that always has something new to say.