What's On / Proms by Day

The story of Tristan and Isolde inspires tonight's Prom by the great Berliner Philharmoniker and its Principal Conductor, Sir Simon Rattle.

The concert opens with the powerful pairing from either end of Wagner's great opera of love and death - its opening notes fused with the concluding 'love-death' of its heroine.

Then pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in the last of his three appearances this year (see Prom 1 and PCM 1) and ondes martenot player Tristan Murail join the orchestra for Messiaen's ecstatic TurangalÎla Symphony - the central apex of the French composer's Tristan trilogy.

It's a work whose rhythmic complexity has been within Rattle's firm grasp for over 20 years. And, as the conductor has declared, 'If rhythm is primarily an expression of the life-force, who better to be our guide than Olivier Messiaen?'