Grieg Holberg Suite Poulenc Concert Champêtre Sibelius Symphony No. 3 DIONYSIS GRAMMENOS CONDUCTOR MAHAN ESFAHANI HARPSICHORD If you associate the harpsichord with its supporting role in Messiah, get ready to hear it in an entirely new light! Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre is an exhilarating romp that explores all the qualities of the instrument, from the playfulness conveyed in scurrying runs that made it such a favourite of film and TV composers in the 1960s (think Margaret Rutherford’s Miss Marple films and the TV series The Avengers), to the instrument’s unexpected capacity for tenderness. Iranian-American Mahan Esfahani is a mercurial talent who has all the wit, flair and panache to perform this celebration of the harpsichord that is a unique collision of the Baroque and the modern. For the rest of this concert, we move from France to Scandinavia, with Grieg’s dancing Holberg Suite and Sibelius’s melancholy yet majestic Third Symphony. Note: Dionysis Grammenos will conduct this concert, as Emilia Hoving unfortunately can no longer appear due to illness. We look forward to welcoming Dionysis, who has been described by Die Welt as ‘one of the most promising stars of tomorrow’