Against the Tide

Lancaster Arts are very proud to welcome the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to the Great Hall in their 80th anniversary year. The four works in this programme resist the grand gestures and massive scale often associated with orchestral romanticism, choosing instead intimacy and the power of individual voices.

At the heart of the programme is the European premiere of Adams’ Cello Concerto, with an emphasis on collaboration rather than confrontation. We are honoured to have cello soloist Simon Tetzlaff, who was recently named Young Talent of the Year 2026 by Opus Klassik, and is the recipient of the Janos Starker Foundation Award of 2024.

Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande concludes the evening with a masterpiece of restraint and atmosphere, demonstrating Fauré's quietly radical refusal of excess, in an age increasingly drawn to spectacle.

This September, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be celebrating 80 years of bringing orchestral music to audiences across the country and around the world. We are delighted to announce that the conductor for the evening will be Michael Poll. Alongside being the classical music programmer for Lancaster Arts, Michael has performed and recorded three times previously with the RPO.

This concert was made possible thanks to a generous donation from The Weisz Foundation in memory of George Weisz.