Elegie

Olivier Award-winning actor Henry Goodman returns to Chichester with concert pianist Lucy Parham in Elégie, chronicling the fascinating life of composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff in words and music.This performance will be streamed online from the Festival Theatre stage.

Though he became an exile in 1917, Rachmaninoff’s cultural identity and longing for his homeland imbue his music, not least the many much-loved works he wrote for his own instrument, the piano. The narrative, scripted by Lucy Parham from letters and diaries, follows the composer from his youth in Russia, through his subsequent self-imposed exile in 1917 and finally to California, where he died in 1943.

The concert includes many of Rachmaninoff’s best-loved works for solo piano, including a selection of Preludes, Etudes-Tableaux and Moments Musicaux, some of his own transcriptions and the haunting Elégie, as well as works by Scriabin and Tchaikovsky.

Henry Goodman’s previous Chichester appearances include Yes, Prime Minister (2010) and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (2012/13); he was due to play the title role in The Life of Galileo in Festival 2020.