Sunday Classics 2024-2025 Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Frizza conductor
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason piano

KODALY Dances of Galanta
CHOPIN Piano Concerto no. 2 (Jeneba Kanneh Mason)
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LISZT Mephisto Waltz
BEETHOVEN Symphony no. 7

Fiery flavours and devilish dances: join Hungary’s esteemed, historic radio orchestra for music to inspire, delight – and set your toes tapping.

The Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra recently celebrated its 80th anniversary, and has long transported the bright colours and strong flavours of its Magyar homeland to audiences right across the globe. Under Italian-born Chief Conductor Riccardo Frizza, the Orchestra has risen to even greater heights of drama, passion and emotion.

The Orchestra naturally brings a flamboyant authenticity to the dashing music of its homeland – including two pieces in today’s vibrant concert. Kodály revisited his childhood home of Galánta to unearth tunes for a whirling medley of dances, each more exuberant than the last. Liszt, however, looked to the legend of Faust – who sold his soul to the devil in return for untold riches – for the sparkling wit of his diabolical Mephisto Waltz.

In between, brilliant young pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason – one of Nottingham’s remarkable seven Kanneh-Mason musical siblings, and a BBC Young Musician finalist at the age of just 16 – is the soloist in Chopin’s exquisitely tender Piano Concerto No. 2, whose delicate slow movement is thought to be a love letter to a fellow student at the Warsaw School of Music.

Frizza concludes his exuberant concert with Beethoven’s most energetic Symphony. No. 7 propels you along with compelling rhythms from start to finish – not for nothing did Richard Wagner famously describe it as ‘the apotheosis of the dance’. Its famous slow movement – heard in countless films from X Men: Apocalypse to The King’s Speech – was so adored at the Symphony’s 1813 premiere that the audience demanded an immediate encore.