Conductor Edward Gardner brings the London Philharmonic Orchestra to Wharton Center

One of the world's leading orchestras will perform in East Lansing Thursday night. The London Philharmonic brings their international tour to the Wharton Center .

WKAR's Scott Pohl takes us with conductor Edward Gardner.

Even the most casual classical music listener has heard performances by the London Philharmonic Orchestra . They provided all of the national anthems for the London Olympics in 2012, and the soundtrack music for the smash hit movies.

Edward Gardner became principal conductor of the London Phil in 2021, so he wasn't involved in recording all those national anthems and the music. As their current leader, Gardner is proud of the orchestra's range. "We have Beethoven to Barber in your program," he explains. "They can do new music, opera, they do everything, and they turn the hand immediately to whatever the genre is we're doing."

A highlight of the program in East Lansing will be Barber's . Gardner compares the work to the concertos of William Walton. The performance will feature the young violinist Randall Goosby, who the conductor describes as hugely charismatic, and with a huge range, adding "he does all of the mainstream works. But actually, to do something so seminal and so American as the Barber concerto, which I think is one of the great masterpieces of Samuel Barber's output, to do that together is a real gift."

Beethoven's will also be in the program. Gardner admires the visceral quality of the , remembering a description he once heard comparing the piece's opening to driving 200 miles an hour on the Autobahn and then slamming into a brick wall. "That is such an extraordinary description of what that piece can do to you, these monolithic, bright colors of Beethoven that no one else could have composed then or now," he continues. "That's what's so extraordinary. It feels so modern to me to stand in front of that piece of music. It's utterly great."

Rounding out the program will be Tchaikovsky's , which the composer himself considered to be his greatest. Gardner says this symphony reminds him of his favorite opera, Tchaikovsky's . "There's something that Onegin says when he comes back towards Tatjana in Act 3. He says 'I've been invited to this ball, but I can't dance. I don't have the energy to dance', and I think this piece is very much about that." Gardner concludes that "it's about not having the joy to be able to move your body to dance, and I think when you have that in your mind, the whole realm of this emotional spectrum of this piece opens up."

This is an expensive and unrelenting tour for the London Philharmonic, with about a dozen concerts in two weeks before winding up at Carnegie Hall. After tonight's program, they'll go down the highway for a Friday concert at the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium . They'll do a completely different program in Ann Arbor, including works by composer in residence Tania León, along with works by Britten, Sibelius and Shostakovich.