Performances of Edward Elgar at BBC Proms

Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations provides both model and inspiration for a new set of variations by 14 living composers premiered here to mark conductor Martyn Brabbins’s 60th birthday. The concert also includes Vaughan Williams’s exquisite Serenade to Music.

The sea rolls through both Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides and Elgar’s sumptuous orchestral song-cycle Sea Pictures. Mussorgsky’s colourful Pictures at an Exhibition and a world premiere by Errollyn Wallen complete the programme.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason joins the CBSO for Elgar’s passionate Cello Concerto. The orchestra marks the centenary of Mieczysław Weinberg – the composer Shostakovich hailed as his successor – with a rare performance of his folk-inspired Third Symphony.

Elgar’s great choral work, The Music Makers, is the musical culmination of a career, drawing together quotations from many of the composer’s best-loved pieces. Vaughan Williams’s luminous ‘Tallis’ Fantasia and Hugh Wood’s Comus complete the programme.

Charismatic American mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton joins Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to lead the musical celebrations that bring the world’s greatest classical music festival to a spectacular close.