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A concert of musical legends and fairy tale. Based on an ancient Mesopotamin text, Prokofiev's 1917 mini-cantata Seven, They Are Seven is a disquieting work that conjures both the fantasies and the realities of the Russian Revolution.

Divine wrath crashes down upon Mesopotamia in Walton’s choral spectacular Belshazzar’s Feast – whose premiere in 1931 was conducted by Malcolm Sargent, later chief conductor of the Proms – while morality gets altogether more ambiguous in Strauss’s richly scored fairy-tale allegory Die Frau ohne Schatten (‘The Woman Without a Shadow’).

Image: Kirill Karabits © Sussie Ahlburg