Latest Press Releases : Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Summer Pops 2012 Now on Sale!

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Summer Pops 2012 Now on Sale!

• Celebration of Music of Lennon & McCartney in Beatles 50th Anniversary Year and McCartney’s 70th Birthday Year
• Vasily Petrenko and Simon Trpčeski Partnership Reunited for all-Russian Programme
• Music from Favourite Films and TV and by Rock Legends, Queen
• A Celebration of the Golden Age of Hollywood Musicals
• Traditional Last Night of the Summer Pops

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual Summer Pops concerts, seven evenings of the finest music, are now on sale, just when you needed a little ray of sunshine to brighten up the January gloom.

Following the sell-out success of the John Lennon Songbook performed in 2008 and 2010, including performances in Shanghai and Beijing, Liverpool Philharmonic celebrates the 50th Anniversary of The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s 70th birthday year, with an evening of songs by the world’s greatest song-writing duo. John Wilson conducts The Two of Us: The Lennon & McCartney Songbook (22 & 23 June) , a hit parade of Beatles favourites arranged for symphony orchestra including Penny Lane, All You Need is Love, Yesterday, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Strawberry Fields and many more. The young and highly original singer Joe Stilgoe joins award-wining jazz singer Claire Martin and Liverpool favourite, actor and vocalist Mark McGann in the music and memories of two of the ‘four lads who shook the world’. The show is scripted by writer/director Bob Eaton, author of the Liverpool Everyman’s 1981 hit Lennon, which made a star out of a teenage Mark McGann.

'A performance of such heat and intensity, it conjures the spirit and the atmosphere of this symphony like no other modern recording' is how Gramophone Magazine described the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s Gramophone Award-winning recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 conducted by Vasily Petrenko. White Nights (28 June) is a chance to hear Petrenko and the Orchestra’s searing account of the work played live, in an all- Russian programme that also sees the reuniting of the acclaimed partnership between the Orchestra, Petrenko and the young Macedonian pianist, Simon Trpčeski in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

An impressive line-up of West End singers from Queen and Ben Elton's record-breaking rock musical We Will Rock You join the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in A Musical Night of Queen (3 July) to perform some of the British rock band’s greatest hits. Numbers including Bohemian Rhapsody, Killer Queen and We are the Champions have seen Queen honoured with seven Ivor Novello Awards and inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Music for Film and Television (12 July) sees screen-music maestro Carl Davis and the Orchestra perform some of the best-loved music from the small and big screen. Liverpool-born screenwriter and playwright Heidi Thomas, whose TV credits include Cranford, Upstairs Downstairs and Call the Midwife, is the guide on a musical journey through music from Cranford and Brassed Off, via The King’s Speech, Black Swan and Titanic!

Conductor John Wilson has painstakingly restored to their original film orchestrations songs from the golden age of Hollywood, made famous by some of Tinsel Town’s most well-known leading ladies. Can’t Help Singing: Hollywood’s Leading Ladies in Concert (21 July) features signature songs by stars including Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Shirley Jones, Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand. Award-winning West End and Broadway star Kim Criswell pays tribute to them in songs including Dear Mr Gable (You Made Me Love You), The Sound of Music, San Francisco and I’m the Greatest Star.

The inimitable Carl Davis closes Liverpool Philharmonic’s Summer Pops 2012 in traditional fashion with Last Night of the Summer Pops (22 July), jam-packed with classical music favourites. Soprano Elizabeth Watts performs opera favourites including Puccini’s O mio babbino caro and Quando m’en and Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim, while no Last Night would be complete without the traditional performances of Parry’s Jerusalem and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.