The best of an exciting season at the Phil

Buoyed by considerable artistic success in the European Capital of Culture year, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic has announced an ambitious new season.

It’s often forgotten, amongst Liverpool’s claims to be British – even European or World – Capital of Pop that the ‘Phil’, as it’s popularly known, has been performing since 1840 and is one of the world’s oldest orchestral institutions. In Europe, only the Royal Philharmonic Society in London and the Leipzig Gewandhaus in Germany have been in existence for longer.

Plans for 2009-10 were announced to more than 1,000 people who crowded into Philharmonic Hall on Hope Street in Liverpool city centre and follow on from the highly successful 2008 season. What was striking at the event was the fact that concert-going is becoming massively more popular in Liverpool. While it was near impossible to get a seat for concerts in the 1950s or 1960s, competition from radio, TV and the myriad of other things bombarding households was simply as nothing compared to today. But still, it’s the thrill of the orchestra on the platform playing music sometimes new, but often very familiar which makes attendance at a concert that bit special.

“At the end of 2008, the Phil recorded a 22% increase in ticket sales compared to the previous year for concerts by the RLPO,” said a Phil spokeswoman. “The number of new households attending concerts increased 26% and audiences travelled further to hear the orchestra with the number of ticket-buyers living outside a one-hour drive from Liverpool increasing 39%.

“We continue to maintain an increase on sales to date compared to last year,” she added. “To date, we are up 12% in income and 4% in the number of tickets sold. Sales for events in January and February were also higher than in 2008 – up 11% in tickets sold and 25% in income.”

Throughout the Capital of Culture year, the RLPO gained centre stage in the city as well as in the vast amount of national and international exposure generated by the celebrations. The orchestra’s principal conductor Vasily Petrenko is now closely associated with Liverpool and now attracts a considerable following. It helps, perhaps, that he is an ardent fan of Liverpool FC.

He’ll be conducting 22 concerts in Liverpool as well as in other cities across the UK and will also take the orchestra on tour to Switzerland in March.
 
Petrenko has established the RLPO as one of the leading UK interpreters of Russian music and will continue the orchestra’s Shostakovich symphony cycle which will be performed in concert and committed to CD.

In January, Petrenko and the RLPO will begin a Mahler Edition – a two-year musical journey through all Mahler’s complete orchestral works, harking back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the RLPO was the first British orchestra to perform all Mahler’s symphonies.
 
The orchestra’s Polish season, begun this spring, will continue and will include the world premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinburg’s Requiem, a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death and Lutoslawski’s virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra.

There will also be the world premiere of Symphony: Magnetite by the Birkenhead-born winner of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers, Emily Howard.

Ensemble 10/10, the contemporary music group, will be reflecting the 50th birthday of Mark-Anthony Turnage and will be presenting music from Middle Eastern countries in conjunction with the Al Farabi Concert Series.

There is also a season of chamber music performances given by the Rodewald Concerts Society at the spectacular Concert Room at St George’s Hall.
 
Concessions for students are available and full details are available on-line at www.liverpoolphil.com