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In the 50th-anniversary year of the Royal Northern College of Music, former student Sir Stephen Hough plays Rachmaninov’s First Piano Concerto – a work full of Romantic passion and ‘youthful freshness’, written while the composer was still a teenage student. Hough is joined onstage by the Manchester-based ´óÏó´«Ã½ Philharmonic and conductor Mark Wigglesworth, who also perform Mahler’s First Symphony – complete with birdsong, fanfares, storms and a funeral march – and a new commission from rising-star composer and RNCM graduate Grace-Evangeline Mason.

Image: Sir Stephen Hough © Jiyang Chen