Francis Bacon (1909-92)
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Southbank Centre, London – Royal Festival Hall
As much-played as anything in the repertoire, probably in the ‘top ten’ of concert favourites, Mussorgsky’s for-piano Pictures (celebrating Viktor Hartmann) as orchestrated Ravel was given a freshly considered showing by the LPO and Edward Gardner with no sense of familiarity breeding contempt. Indeed the music leapt off the page as newly discovered, the LPO in virtuoso form and revelling in the descriptive powers of the Russian’s original canvases as paintbox-coloured by the Frenchman bringing to vibrant life Hartmann’s various artefacts culminating in a majestic ‘Great Gate of Kyiv’ performed with split-second ensemble and as a sonic spectacular.
The concert’s first half opened with Three Screaming Popes, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s also-vibrant piece, for the CBSO and Simon Rattle, composed in response to Francis Bacon’s artistry and he in turn owing to Velázquez’s, premiered in 1989, music that is harsh, dissonant, uncompromising, if not without interior reflection, and compelling throughout its fifteen or so minutes in this thoroughly prepared performance, while Bartók’s Violin Concerto (now No.1) was suppressed during the composer’s lifetime for personal rather than musical reasons. The rapturous opening movement, which became the first of the Opus 5 Portraits, is bountifully beautiful, its successor varied in moods and contrasts, the whole played with brilliance and identification by Alina Ibragimova, which drew a wholly sympathetic and ripe response from the LPO and Gardner.
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Three Screaming Popes
Bela Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 1, Sz. 36, BB 48a
Modest Mussorgsky, orch. Maurice Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition
Alina Ibragimova (violin)
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002t01v
https://www.francis-bacon.com/bacons-world/exhibitions/francis-bacon-papal-portraits-1953