Hisaishi x Scriabin closes out our season with Vasily Petrenko at Southbank Centre: photos and reviews

On Friday 5 June we performed our final Royal Festival Hall concert of the season at Southbank Centre with our Music Director Vasily Petrenko. Diving into the inner emotional worlds of late-Romanticism with Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead and Scriabin's Symphony No.3, we also performed the London premiere our Composer-in-Association Joe Hisaishi's endlessly inventive The Border (Concerto for Three Horns and Orchestra), featuring horn players Ben Hulme and Alexander Edmundson, who were joined by Katy Woolley.

Thank you to everyone there who made the atmosphere electric for our grand finale!

Read on to see more photos and reviews from the evening.

The concert began with the rhythm of beating oars in Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, a piece that was inspired by a black and white reproduction of a painting by Arnold Böcklin of the same name he saw while staying in Paris in 1907. The painter described it as ‘a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.’ Rachmaninoff's tone poem draws us into this dream-world as the boat bearing a mysterious figure approaches the lone island with sections of the orchestra being layered on top of each other, before they each quietly drift away again as the piece draws to a close.

Listeners might have also picked out Rachmaninoff's musical calling card – the Die irae plainchant theme that punctuates many of his works.

We were then joined on stage by our Principal Horn Ben Hulme as well as Alexander Edmundson and Katy Woolley, Principal Horn of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Joe Hisaishi's The Border (Concerto for Three Horns and Orchestra) was written at the request of horn player Nobuaki Fukukawa and premiered in Tokyo in February 2020. Inspired by Schumann's Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, the piece is emblematic of Hisaishi's minimalism, rhythmical playfulness, and individual expressiveness from the solo instruments. The second movement achieved a mournful and contemplative effect by incorporating 'sing-playing' as the soloists used just their mouth-pieces in some moments.

The concert closed with the spectacular sounds of Scriabin's Symphony No.3, 'The Divine Poem', descirbed by Vasily Petrenko in his opening speech as 'an incredible piece of music, one of his richest in colours and richest in ideas.'

Premiered in 1905, Scriabin's music had progressively started to loosen off the shackles of conventional Romantic harmonies and structures. His musical development coincided with his deepening philosophical interest in the likes of Schopenhauer, Wagner, and Nietzsche, as well as mysticism and theosophy. The music he composed later in his life, like the Third Symphony, aspired towards his spiritual awakening.

Thank you to all who joined us for this evening of stunning music. We’ll be back on stage with Vasily Petrenko for our 80th Anniversary Season in 2026–27 at the Royal Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall, playing music by Strauss, Mahler and more.

Missed the concert, or just want to experience it all over again? Listen to the broadcast on Tuesday 14 July on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30pm, or catch up afterwards on BBC Sounds.