Want to explore the world of Lights in the Dark? Accompanying our series at Southbank Centre and the Royal Albert Hall in 2025, our #MoreMusic playlists help you discover music beyond our performances in the concert hall with pieces that defined the lives and journeys of the composers we feature, as well as historical recordings and works by their contemporaries.
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring
With our series opening at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 26 January, dive into the worlds of composers who broke the mould with Stravinsky, Beethoven and Schönberg.
Stravinsky’s The Firebird (1910), his first ballet in partnership with Serge Diaghilev. The brutalism of the Infernal Dance seems to prefigure the language of The Rite of Spring.
Schönberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16 (1909), which predate Berg’s character pieces by just four years. There are parallels here in the extreme dissonance – even violence – of the two scores.
Less well known than the ‘Eroica’ Symphony, which shares the same key as the ‘Emperor’ Concerto, Beethoven’s Symphony No.7 in A major (1812) was begun the same year as the Concerto and completed a year later. Sunny and effortless, it was written in a moment of peace while Beethoven was convalescing and trying to come to terms with his deafness.
Discover our guide to the art for Lights in the Dark
Programme notes and listening recommendations by Jo Kirkbride, 2025
Find #MoreMusic from our 2023-24 Icons Rediscovered series with Vasily Petrenko: