KSO opens its 2023/24 season at St John’s Smith Square on Monday 16 October in a performance of Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony (1913-14, rev. 1918, 1934).

The four-movement work – his second symphony, reconstructed after the original score was lost and subsequently revised twice – is dedicated to his friend and fellow composer George Butterworth. An affectionate, atmospheric, detailed portrayal of Vaughan Williams’s adopted city, it features the Westminster Chimes and evokes memories of locations including Westminster Embankment, the Strand and Bloomsbury Square.

The programme opens with Elena Kats-Chernin’s Big Rhap (2017) – a musical sketch of her memories of hearing her mother play Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 when the family lived in Russia. Featuring the Soviet-born Australian composer’s trademark motor rhythms and relentless drive, it aims to capture what she describes as “the pain of a shivering and wounded heart”. 

The orchestra also performs the song-cycle Notturni ed Alba (1970) by the British composer John McCabe (1939-2015). A setting of four medieval Latin poems addressing various aspects of night, written for solo soprano and boasting a vast array of percussion, it has been described as “some of his most exotically and seductively beautiful music… a work of dark and intense passion”.