Spotlight Series at Home: Conducted by Alpesh Chauhan

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs a versatile and powerful range of classical and Romantic music in this Spotlight Series at Home concert from London’s Cadogan Hall.

Principal Cello Richard Harwood performs this streaming concert’s centrepiece, Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C major. Unearthed in 1961, two centuries after it was written, it swiftly gained popularity for its sense of joy and optimism from the cello’s triumphant opening chord in the first movement to the rapturous third movement as the melody dances between the soloist and orchestra with virtuosic and vivacious displays of musical agility.

The concert closes with an intimate and enrapturing chamber work by Wagner, written as a surprise gift for his wife Cosima and infant son, Siegfried. With heroic trumpet calls and invocations of birdsong in the woodwind that would later appear in his opera Siegfried, this piece perfectly captures the grand, mythic narratives that shaped Wagner’s creative life.