Photos and reactions: Wagner x Taneyev at Southbank Centre

Our 2025–26 season with our Music Director Vasily Petrenko continued on Sunday 17 May as we performed music that made a spiritual journey through faith, struggle and acceptance with Taneyev's cantata John of Damascus, featuring the Philharmonia Chorus, and Wagner's Parsifal.

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

The evening opened with the sparkling overture to Mozart's The Magic Flute, notable as an opera that was designed to be more accessible to theatre-goers, with more spoken dialogue so the audience could follow along, a leaner orchestration, and less florid and repetition-filled treatment of the libretto. Mozart, a Freemason, also peppered it with references to Masonic symbolism with the number three appearing throughout the structure and modality of the music.

Sergei Taneyev, a relatively unknown composer in the west, was a pupil of Tchaikovsky and Rubinstein, and in turn taught composition to Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and many more. Inspired by the poetry of Alexey Tolstoy, his cantata John of Damascus – a fire-and-brimstone retelling of the life of the eight-century theologian – was performed with intensity by the Orchestra accompanied by the Philharmonia Chorus 'singing with dramatic immediacy and stinging force' (Seen and Heard International). Often referred to as the 'Russian Bach', Taneyev had a deep interest in the theory of counterpoint, but he was not as prolific a composer as the Baroque composer, only publishing 36 works in his lifetime.

Wagner’s last opera, Parsifal, represented the culmination of his career. Having established his own opera house at Bayreuth and loyal audience, the first public staging in 1882 of the opera, or ‘music drama’, centered around the Arthurian legend of a knight’s quest for the Holy Grail, was as much of a sacred and palingenetic ritual as a musical performance: the composer believed that ‘when religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it.’ The Orchestra performed a 40-minute orchestral suite arranged by Erich Leinsdorf, a selection of the most radiant moments from the opera, including the Act I and III Preludes, Good Friday Music, and Titurel’s Funeral March.

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.