Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Sunday, March 6

Howard Shelley OBE is one of this country’s most formidable musical talents, both as pianist and conductor.

His prolific recording career – with some 150 or so albums to date – has drawn attention to parts of the Romantic piano repertoire that had been sadly neglected for far too long.

At the same time, his highly acclaimed recordings of such masters as Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn display a freshness that allies technical excellence with musical sensitivity in such a way that few can match.

He joins the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra this Sunday afternoon both as soloist and conductor, combining the two roles in a performance of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto.

The concert opens with Brahms’ Variations On A Theme By Haydn, also known as the St Anthony Variations, a piece that heralds the beginning of the composer’s maturity as an orchestral composer.

The work brings together Brahms’ genius for imaginative thematic transformation with his gift for rich orchestral colouring.

The concert will conclude with Mendelssohn’s much loved Scottish Symphony, No. 3 in A minor.

For all its possible allusions to desolate moors, mist-shrouded highlands and, in the final movement, the sound of clan warfare, the symphony is more a recollection of impressions that the young composer gathered on his Highland journey.

As such it stands on its own as one of the best-loved early Romantic symphonies

The central work, the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Shostakovich, will be directed from the piano by Howard Shelley.

It was written in the mid 1950s in a straightforward and cheerful vein for the composer’s aspiring concert pianist son Maxim.

Youthful exuberance is a key aspect of the work, and although Shostakovich may have considered it of "no artistic value", audiences ever since have begged to disagree.

Peter Back

Starts 2.45pm, tickets from £11.50. Call 01273 709709 or visit brightondome.org