Antonio Pappano dirige Chaikóvski y Vaughan Williams — Con Antoine Tamestit, Julia Sitkovetsky y Ashley Riches

Led by its superb chief conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, the London Symphony Orchestra invites a trio of soloists — violist Antoine Tamestit, soprano Julia Sitkovetsky, and bass-baritone Ashley Riches — to join them in an emotional and original program that pairs Tchaikovsky's sweeping Romanticism with Vaughan Williams's pastoral grandeur. Opening the program is the Russian composer's Fourth Symphony, a journey that begins with an F-minor knock of fate and ends in thunderous F-major triumph. Two unjustly lesser-heard works by Vaughan Williams follow: first, the renowned Tamestit takes the solo role in Flos Campi, inspired by the Song of Solomon and written for the unusual combination of viola, small orchestra, and wordless chorus. Finally, Sitkovetsky, Riches, and the London Symphony Chorus perform the impassioned Dona nobis pacem, a fervent call for peace by a composer who had witnessed the senselessness of violence firsthand as a stretcher bearer in World War I and despaired to see the clouds of war gather anew in 1936.