November 2018

St John’s Smith Square, London 7.30pm

Love, death and tragedy – the great themes of grand opera – are re-enacted in the concert hall through Liszt’s dazzlingly inventive fantasies for keyboard. The powerful interplay of narrative, melody and harmony wrought by Wagner, Donizetti and Verdi is re-worked for solo instrument, with an astonishing re-creation of the original orchestral and vocal colour and richness. With Scarlatti as a curtain-raiser, the dramatic scene is perfectly set for Schubert’s haunting and majestic Sonata in B flat major, written just weeks before the composer’s tragic death at the age of 31.