Proms 2021 Mahler’s 5th Symphony conducted by Mark Wigglesworth

After a year in which venues fell quiet and orchestras downsized, tonight’s Prom is a celebration of all an orchestra can do. A specially assembled Proms Festival Orchestra – made up of leading freelance musicians and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth – performs two colourful showpieces of the repertoire. Shostakovich’s Festive Overture bubbles over with a fresh exuberance that reflects the fact that its composer wrote it in two days flat.

Mahler’s Fifth Symphony spans an expressive chasm from the Funeral March of the first movement to a precariously unhinged Scherzo via the work’s lingering, lyrical soul: the heart-rendingly beautiful Adagietto, written as a musical love letter to his wife Alma.

Image: Mark Wigglesworth © Ben Ealovega