Proms 2015 Prom 66: Beethoven, Schoenberg & Shostakovich

Mitsuko Uchida makes a welcome return to the Proms for Schoenberg’s rarely heard Piano Concerto. It’s a work whose 12-tone abstraction is tempered by intriguing autobiographical suggestions – ‘Life was so easy’, ‘Suddenly hatred broke out’ – scribbled on the original manuscript. Autobiography is also at the fore in Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony. Composed in 1943, at a particularly dark moment for Russia in the war, the work is a fragile statement of hope that the composer himself summarised as: ‘All that is dark and oppressive will disappear; all that is beautiful will triumph.’