LSO Futures – The Music of Tomorrow

François-Xavier Roth makes musical history, with vivid, moreish music fresh from the imaginations of some of the boldest and brightest composers living and working today.

The Programme

An orchestra holds infinite possibilities for music-making. Unsuk Chin’s SPIRA and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra both show off the capabilities and curiosities of the instruments of the orchestra. Donghoon Shin’s eloquent Cello Concerto, inspired by the eerie poetry of Georg Trakl, sees the LSO’s own Principal Cello take the spotlight as soloist.

And how do today’s emerging composers, the voices of tomorrow, begin to work with a major orchestra? Two composers from the LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme present brand new music created in collaboration with the Orchestra.

This concert begins with a performance of Per Luciano Berio by Péter Eötvös, in tribute to the late composer, who passed away on 24 March. Read the LSO’s tribute to Peter Eötvös.

LSO Futures

LSO Futures is a collaboration between François-Xavier Roth and the LSO that goes back over a decade – ‘a festival championing new music, not just the music of our time, but also music from the last decades’, in the conductor’s own words. ‘I often say that I love contemporary music from all periods of music history,’ says Roth.

‘All music was modern music at the time. And I think that as a society, as an audience, as artists, the more we have close contact to the music written today, the better. There’s a risk in something you don’t know; something that shakes us or provokes us is healthy. And I think that music should keep going, inventing and showing the world of tomorrow.’

‘It’s my contact with the composers of our time which makes me reconsider things and ask myself much more interesting questions’

–  François-Xavier Roth

Read the programme

The LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme is generously supported by Lady Hamlyn and The Helen Hamlyn Trust.