Berlin Philharmonic Plays Elgar and Tchaikovsky

Live at the BBC Proms: Kirill Petrenko conducts the Berlin Philharmonic in Elgar's Enigma Variations and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.

Presented by Kate Molleson, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Edward Elgar: ‘Enigma’ Variations

c.7.10pm
Interval: Neil MacGregor has been Director of the National Gallery and the British Museum, and he was founding director of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin until 2018. He talks to Kate Molleson about the arts in Berlin and seeing the Berlin Philharmoniker perform.

c.7.30pm
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

‘An artist lives a double life,’ Tchaikovsky wrote. The Berlin Philharmonic and Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko return to the Proms with a concert of concealed identities and confessions, musical secrets and hidden selves, explored in two Romantic orchestral classics. The secret theme concealed within Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations remains elusive, but the heart-on-sleeve appeal of the composer’s wistful, warmly personal musical sketches of his friends is anything but. The personal conflicts that lie beneath the tumultuous surface of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 are darker: Fate assails the listener before the music casts off its grip in a defiantly joyous finale.