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Hollywood comes to the Barbican with music from The Bad and the Beautiful and its ageless theme song also called "Love is For the Very Young" - one of the most beautiful themes in movie history.
Like a ringmaster, Ravel sets his Piano Concerto in G major in motion with a flick of the whip. Then come Basque folk melodies and glittering trills followed by a slow movement with a melody like a stately sarabande. This hypnotic 34 bar melody was a painstaking high-wire act for Ravel. As he wrote: ‘That flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!' And that is followed by a bravura third movement infused with the sounds of the jazz age. Bertrand Chamayou - one of France's leading pianists - promises to re-create Ravel's brilliant Concerto afresh.
And in the second half, Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra follow up their stunning pre-pandemic performances of Vaughan Williams’ Fourth and Sixth Symphonies with the sophisticated, original Fifth. The work deeply moved audiences who heard it at its premiere during World War II, its bittersweet melodies and transcendent climax seemingly offering listeners a vision of future peace.

Presented by Martin Handley.

David Raksin: The Bad and the beautiful - music for the film
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major
Vaughan Williams: Symphony no. 5 in D major

Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)