Kirill Richter: Towards the Beloved City at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Kirill Richter’s new album, Towards the Beloved City, turns private feeling into public sound — music built from heartbreak and the slow work of recovery.
On 17 October, Kirill Richter brings the album to London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, performing with violinist Alena Zinovieva and cellist Avgust Krepak as the Richter Trio. The 75-minute concert includes the complete album and several earlier pieces.
The record is made up of eight waltzes. Warner Classics describes it as “a map of emotional survival,” dedicated to those who have loved someone they couldn’t reach, or stayed too long before finding the courage to leave. The Southbank Centre calls it “music for anyone who’s ever felt lost and still kept going.”
Last year, the Trio filled the London Coliseum with The Sands of Time, a large-scale multimedia production. Beloved City moves in the opposite direction: smaller hall, smaller forces, sharper focus. Queen Elizabeth Hall’s intimacy suits music that depends on quiet gestures and close attention.
Richter’s path to composition was unorthodox. He studied quantum physics in Moscow and fashion design in the UK before turning to music. That mix of structure and sensibility shows in his writing: clear forms, lyrical phrasing, emotion held in restraint. His credits range from ballets such as Seven Ages with choreographer Marco Goecke to scores for the FIFA World Cup and Olympic ceremonies.
Towards the Beloved City continues Richter’s fascination with time and memory but keeps the lens tight. The waltz’s endless turning becomes a way of tracing how people move through loss.
London is part of that story. Richter studied here and often returns to perform. Bringing Beloved City to the Southbank feels like a quiet homecoming to the place that helped shape his voice.
“My music is a soundtrack for life,” Richter says on the Southbank Centre website. “The stories I tell somehow resonate with other lives. This is when the feeling of all of us speaking the same language is born.”
Dates & times
17 Oct 2025, 7.30pm
Run time
1 hour and 15 minutes (approx)
Tickets
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/kirill-richter-towards-the-beloved-city/#times-tickets
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.