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London Symphony Orchestra/Gardiner

Stravinsky & Bartók

Piotr Anderszewski

Stravinsky meets Tchaikovsky, Anderszewski plays Bartók, and a baby elephant dances a polka: Sir John Eliot Gardiner is the ringmaster in an exuberantly colourful concert.

Stravinsky was happy to write a ballet for a circus elephant – but only if it was ‘very young’. That same youthful spirit powers this whole concert, as Sir John Eliot Gardiner rediscovers Stravinsky’s homage to Tchaikovsky, and Piotr Anderszewski plays Bartók’s life-affirming concerto from the New World.

Listeners in the 1920s were astonished when the modernist firebrand Stravinsky started adapting Tchaikovsky. In fact, Stravinsky adored him, and his ballet The Fairy’s Kiss puts Tchaikovsky’s music under a very modern – but utterly magical – spell. Sir John Eliot Gardiner brings all his energy and insight to this enchanting score, while Anderszewski’s interpretation of Bartók’s Third Concerto has been compared to ‘a lustrous, multifaceted jewel’.

The performance is expected to finish around 9.30pm, including a 20 minute interval.

Barbican Hall