The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, with pianist Mitsuko Uchida.
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4 in G
Berlioz : 'Symphonie fantastique'
(Mitsuko Uchida returns to the Proms after an absence of almost 20 years as the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4, which overturned formal traditions by opening with a simple statement for solo piano. Musical ideas are tested to their limits in a conversation between keyboard and orchestra.
The opium-fuelled obsessions, flower-like dancers, rural idyll, rolling tumbrel and danse macabre of Berlioz’s 1830 gothic masterpiece 'Symphonie fantastique' conclude the first of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra’s two Proms (see also Prom 35) with Mariss Jansons, who celebrates his 70th birthday this year.)
(Note: at 5.15pm in the Royal College of Music there is a Proms Plus Literary event. To mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Plath and the publication of her novel The Bell Jar, Lavinia Greenlaw and Sarah Churchwell look back on the legacy of the poet.)