Lights in the Dark - an artist's guide

Our 2025 season Lights in the Dark at the Southbank Centre and Royal Albert Hall is dedicated to music written during turbulent times in history and despite composers' difficult personal circumstances, demonstrating how music can be a method for working through and reckoning with such experiences. We commissioned artist Shadric Toop to create a piece of art that incorporated many of the key elements and subjects of the music featured in the season - take a look at our breakdown of what each unique character, object and symbol represents below.

1. & 9.

Designs inspired by Polish wycinanki folk art. Chopin was forced to leave his Polish homeland shortly after the premiere of his second piano concerto and lived in exile until the end of his life (Chopin Piano Concerto No.1, 20 May), The design in the shape of a sun represents the sunrise portrayed in Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony in the same concert.

2.

The Firebird. This fantastical creature is the focus of Stravinsky’s ballet of the same name (25 May)

3.

Mountains and trees, representing both the Alps (An Alpine Symphony, 20 May), the mountains of Night on the Bare Mountain (also 20 May) and the Scandinavian landscapes present in much of Sibelius’ music (Finlandia, 27 Apr, Violin Concerto 25 May)

4.

Shostakovich is seen in his Leningrad fire warden uniform, alongside anti-aircraft guns of the kind used during the Siege of Leningrad, representing Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7, ‘Leningrad’ (27 Apr)

5.

The Sea Hawk: the ship that is the subject of the 1940 film starring Errol Flynn (see number 8) with a score written by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an Austrian composer who fled Nazi Germany and settled the US. (23 Mar)

6.

Lamia was a serpent-turned-woman who married the Corinthian youth Lycius in Greek mythology. That myth is the subject of John Keats’ poem Lamia which is represented in Dorothy Howell’s symphonic poem of the same title (25 Jun)

7.

The composer, pianist and organist Florence Price shown at the piano. Jeneba Kanneh-Mason performs her Piano Concerto in One Movement on 25 June.

8.

Errol Flynn, the famous swashbuckling actor who starred in The Sea Hawk, see number 5 (23 Mar).

9.

Floral art in a design inspired by Polish wycinanki folk art, see number 1. (Chopin Piano Concerto No.1, 20 May)

10.

Napoleon was once loved by Beethoven, but Beethoven then despised him once he declared himself Emperor. Napoleon was the original dedicatee of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto (26 Jan)

11.

An American Civil War soldier. Kurt Weill had to flee the Nazi regime and emigrated to America. He felt very at home in his new home, even before he became an American citizen. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour he quickly composed three songs based Walt Whitman’s Civil War Poems. He added a fourth in 1947. Roderick Williams sings the songs on 27 April.

12.

Vasily Petrenko – the RPO’s Music Director who conducts all six performances in this series.

13.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, the venue for four concerts of the six concerts in the series.

14.

A woman playing a tuohitorvi. These natural trumpets, known across Scandinavia, are made of spruce covered in birch bark. Sibelius’ Finlandia was composed as a covert symbol of nationalism and protest against Russian rule of Finland and became an unofficial anthem for Finnish independence. (27 Apr)

15.

The Rite of Spring is represented by a dancer in a costume and pose inspired by the original costume designs (Nicholas Roerich) and choreography (Vaslav Nijinsky) of the first performances of the ballet which was accompanied by radical and violent music written by Igor Stravinsky (26 Jan)

16.

A steam ship, representing the many composers who felt compelled to leave Europe and travel to a new home in America by steamer (Korngold, Rachmaninov and Bartók 23 Mar RFH, Kurt Weill 27 Apr, Stravinsky 26 Jan)

17.

Stormy skies and lightning – representing the internal conflict and fate theme of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony (25 Jun)

18.

Suitcases – also representing the journeys that so many composers had to make as emigrés (Korngold, Rachmaninov and Bartók 23 Mar RFH, Kurt Weill 27 Apr and Chopin 20 May)

19.

The Royal Albert Hall, the venue for where we'll play two of the six concerts in the series

20.

The bombed streets of Leningrad. Leningrad was under siege for 872 days and suffered untold destruction by the Axis powers. Shostakovich began writing his seventh symphony in the besieged city and it was eventually submitted in honour of the city. (27 Apr)

21.

Was the music and choreography of The Rite of Spring so radical that the audience rioted? Hear Stravinsky’s music for the complete ballet on 26 January 2025.

22.

Beethoven, composer of the ‘Emperor’ Piano Concerto, which was a radical departure from previous concertos (26 Jan)

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Lights in the Dark - an artist's guide

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