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Prom 52: The Boston Symphony Orchestra play Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony

Live at the 91Èȱ¬ Proms: Andris Nelsons conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in music by Julia Adolphe, Richard Strauss and Prokofiev.

Live at the 91Èȱ¬ Proms: Andris Nelsons conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in music by Julia Adolphe, Richard Strauss and Prokofiev.

Presented by Tom Service, live from the Royal Albert Hall.

Julia Adolphe: Makeshift Castle (European premiere)
Richard Strauss: Death and Transfiguration

c.7.10 pm
Interval
Tom Service is joined by Russian-born British musicologist and Cambridge University Professor Marina Frolova-Walker to talk about Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony.

c.7.30 pm

Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

The mighty Boston Symphony Orchestra returns to the Proms under Music Director Andris Nelsons for the first of two concerts – human resilience the theme. ‘I conceived of it as glorifying the grandeur of the human spirit,’ Prokofiev wrote of his Fifth Symphony, premiered in January 1945 at the start of the USSR’s successful final offensive against Nazi Germany. The defiant optimism of the finale is mirrored in Richard Strauss’s tone-poem Death and Transfiguration, in which a dying man gains a musical glimpse of eternity. Jointly commissioned by the BSO and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, of which Nelsons is also Music Director, Julia Adolphe’s Makeshift Castle offers a contemporary meditation on fragility and endurance.

02:10 Julia Adolphe: Makeshift Castle
22:17 Richard Strauss: Death and Transfiguration
51:08 Interval: Marina Frolova-Walker on Prokofiev's 5th Symphony
01:14:07 Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

2 hours, 44 minutes

Music Played

  • Julia Adolphe

    Makeshift Castle

    Orchestra: Boston Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Andris Nelsons.
  • Richard Strauss

    Death and Transfiguration

    Orchestra: Boston Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Andris Nelsons.
  • Sergey Prokofiev

    Symphony No. 5 in B flat major

    Orchestra: Boston Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Andris Nelsons.
  • Sergey Prokofiev

    Visions Fugitives, Op 22

    Performer: Alexander Melnikov.
    • Harmonia Mundi.
  • Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

    Arioso with variations in A Major for keyboard and violin, Wq. 79

    Performer: Kristian Bezuidenhout. Performer: Rachel Podger.
    • Channel Classics.
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

    Rondo in D major, K.485

    Performer: Kristian Bezuidenhout.
    • Mozart: Keyboard Music Volume 2.
    • Harmonia Mundi.
    • 5.

Broadcast

  • Fri 25 Aug 2023 18:30

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