London Symphony Orchestra & Gianandrea Noseda

Prokofiev sends an urgent musical bulletin from Stalin’s Russia with his Symphony No. 5—music of iron and steel, forged in a time of war and tyranny.

"Certain moments in history gave composers the possibility of saying something deeply personal", says LSO Principal Guest Conductor Gianandrea Noseda. "And Shostakovich speaks equally to us today." As Noseda and the LSO continue their journey through Shostakovich's symphonies, which span the composer's lifetime, they take on one of his biggest creations, the Seventh. Written during the siege of Leningrad in World War II, it is shattering in scale and impact. For Noseda, "you can hear the march of the soldiers, the obsessive repetition, a loop you cannot escape," in the relentless, pounding rhythms, the struggle towards a fragile victory.

Prokofiev’s Symphony No 3 is dedicated to Myaskovsky and first performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris on 17 May 1929. It is one of Prokofiev’s most intense works, unleashing a barrage of confrontational energy that carries with it as much relentless forward momentum as pulverising anxiety. ‘I had never before felt anything similar when listening to music,’ remarked Prokofiev’s colleague, the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, on hearing the piece; ‘it felt to me like an apocalypse’.

Seong-Jin Cho garnered international attention and critical accolades through his first prize victory in the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition, followed by a studio recording pairing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 and the 4 Ballades. Five years later, Seong-Jin returns to Chopin with a complementary program consisting of the romantic Piano Concerto No. 2 and the 4 Scherzi.