Proms 2016 Prom 57

An Alpine Symphony combines the tunefulness, richness of orchestration and sheer unadulterated beauty of Richard Strauss’s character-based tonepoems with what is probably his most impressive piece of musical architecture.

Whether depicting a bracing mountain climb or the slow formation of the mountain range itself, the work has a magnificence all of its own, particularly when resounding through the Royal Albert Hall. The BBC Symphony Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov scales its heights here, after Wagner’s unalloyed love songs for Mathilde Wesendonck and the first UK performance of Thomas Larcher’s Symphony No. 2.