Set List | 'No.52 (Three pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven: Dreaming, Hearing Loss and Saying Goodbye)', R Ayres, 'Symphony No.7 in A Major', Beethoven |
Performance Notes | This Prom will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 19:30 BST and then on BBC Four at 20:00 BST.
Please note that it will not be possible to have an audience at the Royal Albert Hall for this concert.
Beethoven's hearing loss plunged the composer into isolation and despair, so it's hard to believe him capable of producing a symphony such as his Seventh, which pulses with restless energy - and which the Aurora Orchestra plays from memory. It's a work with a special place in Proms history, too: it was the last piece Proms founder-conductor Henry Wood directed before his death in 1944.
Richard Ayres opens the concert with a deeply personal new work inspired both by Beethoven's journey into deafness and his own experience of hearing loss, a vivid soundscape in which clarity gradually gives way to confusion.
Radio 3's Tom Service and Aurora Orchestra Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon guide us through the programme with their customary lively and expert introductions.
'No.52 (Three pieces about Ludwig van Beethoven: Dreaming, Hearing Loss and Saying Goodbye)', R Ayres - World premiere and BBC co-commission. |