This summer, Vasily Petrenko will step on the podium to conduct the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the first concerts in his new role as the orchestra’s Music Director.
At the BBC Proms on 4 August, they are joined by Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji for Respighi’s Concerto gregoriano – a spiritual serenade in which the soloist becomes a wordless cantor, whose plainsong-inspired melodies soar over the orchestra. Two more tributes to the musical past complete the programme: Vaughan Williams’s haunting Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis takes inspiration from Tudor polyphony, while Mendelssohn’s youthful ‘Reformation’ Symphony climaxes in Martin Luther’s stirring chorale ‘A mighty fortress is our God’. Tickets go on sale on 26 June: www.bbc.co.uk
The Edinburgh International Festival performance on 9 August includes the unstoppable rhythms of Beethoven’s joyful Seventh Symphony as well as Clara Schumann’s remarkable Piano Concerto, begun when she was just 14, in the company of one of the composer’s most devoted interpreters, Isata Kanneh-Mason. Tickets go on sale on 11 June: www.eif.co.uk