The Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos takes the Philharmonia’s podium for Beethoven’s Eighth and Shostakovich’s Fifteenth, with Nobuyuki Tsujii in Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto.
Leonidas Kavakos, the Greek violinist, conducts the Philharmonia in Beethoven and Shostakovich at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank on Sunday 11 April 2027. The pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii joins him for Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto.
Kavakos grew up in a musical family in Athens, where he still runs an annual violin and chamber-music masterclass. He plays the ‘Willemotte’ Stradivarius of 1734 and is a former Gramophone Artist of the Year.
In recent years he has built a second career as a conductor. He has led the New York Philharmonic, the Filarmonica della Scala and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He also recorded the Beethoven Violin Concerto as soloist and conductor at once.
London knows him first as a violinist with the London Symphony Orchestra, and he plays Shostakovich with them at the Barbican in December. Here he leaves the violin aside and sets Beethoven’s compact Eighth Symphony against Shostakovich’s Fifteenth, a symphony full of musical quotations.
Tsujii, blind from birth, won joint gold at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009 and is the Philharmonia’s Featured Artist this season. Jason Evans plays the concerto’s solo trumpet.