SCO 22/23: Les Illuminations

Hallucinations and wild imaginings: join Finnish musical pioneer Pekka Kuusisto on a journey into the strange and the wonderful in the third concert in his SCO residency.

With adulation for his 'Peter Grimes' last year at London’s Royal Opera House, Allan Clayton is the most exciting British tenor of the moment – and one of our most celebrated interpreters of Britten. He’s the soloist amid the fanfares, parades and sensual visions of Britten’s larger-than-life Les Illuminations, settings of phantasmagorical verse by French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

There’s more Gallic surrealism in the witty 'Songs for tenor, violin and drone' by New York-based Nico Muhly, and Kuusisto is the soloist in the long-awaited Scottish premiere of his friend and colleague’s dashing, exuberant violin concerto 'Shrink'. In between, Haydn’s final, grandest and most joyful Symphony, written expressly to surprise and delight.

Pekka Kuusisto Violin/Director
Allan Clayton Tenor

MUHLY Three Songs for tenor, violin and drone
HAYDN Symphony No 104 in D ‘London’
MUHLY Violin Concerto ‘Shrink’ (Scottish Premiere)*
BRITTEN Les Illuminations

*Co-commissioned by Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, St Paul Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.