What's On / Proms by Day
TUESDAY 4 AUGUST 2009
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4.45pm Proms Literary Festival
Victorian Season: Roy Hattersley and Professor Valentine Cunningham speak out in defence of the Victorian novel. Are these books still pinnacles of English literature? Actor Henry Goodman provides the readings and Matthew Sweet chairs the event.
Edited version broadcast on Radio 3 during tonight's interval.
Prom 26: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Date Tuesday 4 August 2009
- Time 6.30pm - c8.55pm
- Venue Royal Albert Hall
- Tickets £7 - £35 price band A or Prom for £5
- Broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3. Available as audio on demand for the following week.
- This programme is no longer available.
In the second of his two Proms with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Swiss-born Thierry Fischer introduces a new work by another of his compatriots: celebrating his 70th birthday this year, oboist-composer Heinz Holliger's punningly entitled (S)irató is an 'angry' lament for his teacher, the Hungarian composer Sándor Veress.
We continue our Mendelssohn bicentenary celebrations with a pairing of his rarely heard First Symphony (completed when he was only 15, and later dedicated to the London Philharmonic Society) and his ever-popular Violin Concerto, played by Isabelle Faust in her Proms debut. To end, a selection from Prokofiev's richly Romantic Shakespearean ballet, Romeo and Juliet.
- Mendelssohn
- Symphony No.1 in C minor (32 mins)
- Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (28 mins)
- interval
- Heinz Holliger (S)irató (UK premiere) (15 mins)
- Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet - excerpts (c25 mins)
- Isabelle Faust violin
- BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Thierry Fischer conductor
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Prom 27: London Sinfonietta
- Date Tuesday 4 August 2009
- Time 10.00pm - c11.15pm
- Venue Royal Albert Hall
- Tickets £10 - £15 price band D or Prom for £5
- Broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3. Available as audio on demand for the following week.
- This programme is no longer available.
To celebrate Sir Harrison Birtwistle's 75th birthday the London Sinfonietta is rejoined by its founder-conductor David Atherton to perform three of the composer's major early works – all of which the ensemble premiered during its first decade.
A virtuosic showpiece for brass, wind and percussion, the 1969 Verses for Ensembles was Birtwistle's earliest Sinfonietta score, and echoes the violent lyricism of his opera Punch and Judy. The other two works were both composed after Birtwistle had completed the first two acts of his massive 'lyric tragedy' The Mask of Orpheus (Prom 39).
Silbury Air, named after the mysterious man-made mound in Wiltshire, uses a 'pulse labyrinth' to direct explorations of its 'imaginary landscapes', while in Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum, written for the Sinfonietta's 10th anniversary in 1978, six musical mechanisms are set in perpetual motion and then put on a collision course.
- Sir Harrison Birtwistle
- Carmen arcadiae mechanicae perpetuum (10 mins)
- Silbury Air (16 mins)
- Verses for Ensembles (28 mins)
- London Sinfonietta
- David Atherton conductor
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- BBC Proms 2009
- All Proms broadcasts - available for 7 days
2009 Calendar
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July | ||||||
| 17 | 18 | |||||
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
| August | ||||||
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
| September | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
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