Elgar’s First Symphony

Live at the BBC Proms: the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra performs music by Elgar, Judith Weir and Brett Dean with chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, soprano Claire Booth and the BBC Singers.

Presented by Tom Service, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Judith Weir: Moon and Star
Brett Dean: The World’s Wife (BBC co-commission: world premiere)

c.8.15pm
Interval: Brett Dean talks to Tom Service about his BBC co-commision and world premiere of The World's Wife. Plus, David Owen Norris talks about Elgar's relationship with his wife, Alice, who was also his his muse, manager and critic.

c.8.35pm
Edward Elgar: Symphony No. 1 in A flat major

Claire Booth, soprano
BBC Singers
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth, conductor

‘Human life … and a massive hope in the future’: this – no less – is Elgar’s sweeping subject for his First Symphony – a work once nicknamed ‘Brahms’s Fifth’ for its close relationship with the German tradition. Exuberant and filled with orchestral colour, an ‘immediate and phenomenal success’ at its premiere, it’s the work of a composer steeped in musical history but looking to the future. Two contemporary works open this concert by Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: the world premiere of The World’s Wife by Brett Dean – setting words by Carol Ann Duffy – and Judith Weir’s Moon and Star – capturing the vastness and strangeness of space through the eyes of New England poet Emily Dickinson.