Philharmonia Orchestra: Valentine's Day Concert

Romantic classics for Valentine's Day conducted by Joji Hattori

In collaboration with the Menuhin Competition, this evening's violin showcase focuses on the most popular of all violin concertos, Bruch's G minor, a gloriously impassioned masterwork culminating in a finale of scintillating bravado.

Violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate was known popularly as the "Spanish Paganini" and little wonder given the pyrotechnical wizardry of his Navarra and Fantasy on themes from Bizet's Carmen.

We stay in the world of opera for Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, a nostalgic, waltz-saturated look back at the imperialist regime of Vienna, shortly to be reduced to political rubble, and for openers the work that put Tchaikovsky on the musical map once and for all - Romeo and Juliet.