A taut BBC Proms programme placed virtuosity beside historical memory, with Kirill Gerstein and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra moving from Rachmaninov’s brilliance to Shostakovich’s troubled past.
Pianist Kirill Gerstein joined the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor Thomas Søndergård at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 3 August 2026 for a BBC Proms concert centred on Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The evening also paired Oliver Knussen’s brief Flourish with Fireworks with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11, “The Year 1905”.
Virtuosity under pressure
The four-minute Knussen opener served as more than a ceremonial curtain-raiser. Written in 1988 as a celebratory piece for Michael Tilson Thomas, it compressed bright orchestral gestures into a compact burst of colour. Here it also acknowledged a British composer and conductor whose work remains closely associated with adventurous modern programming.
Gerstein then took the solo role in the Rachmaninov Paganini Variations, the 1934 score better known as the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Built from the violin virtuoso’s 24th Caprice, its 24 variations continually recast a lean theme, setting its sharp outline against the medieval Dies irae chant and Rachmaninov’s own expansive lyricism.
A review published after the concert by critic Jon Jacob described a performance that did not conceal its risks. He noted moments of unsettled ensemble and less-than-perfect clarity, but heard the closing variations gather decisive force. That critical response matters because the Rhapsody can easily become a polished display piece. Its drama depends instead on tension between control and instability, with the pianist negotiating abrupt changes of texture, tempo and character.
A programme built on memory
After the interval, Søndergård and the RSNO turned to Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. The work takes the events of Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg in 1905 as its subject, unfolding across four connected movements. Revolutionary songs run through the score, while long stretches of restraint give way to orchestral violence and an ending dominated by insistent bells.
Placed after Rachmaninov, the symphony changed the scale of the evening. The Rhapsody transforms borrowed musical material through individual virtuosity; Shostakovich uses quotation to construct a collective memory of political trauma. Knussen’s miniature, written as a tribute, completed a programme in which earlier music and remembered lives were repeatedly brought into the present.
The concert showed why the BBC Proms can still make familiar repertoire feel newly argued rather than merely repeated. Gerstein’s combination of analytical precision and physical attack met an orchestra working across sharply contrasted styles, from Knussen’s concentrated modernism to Shostakovich’s monumental narrative. In that context, the Rachmaninov Paganini Variations became the hinge of an evening concerned with transformation, memory and the expressive value of risk.
Programme details are available from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.