Proms 2015 Prom 64: Nielsen, B Tommy Andersson & Mahler

Thomas Søndergård and the BBC NOW return for their fourth concert, opening with a suite from Nielsen’s music for Oehlenschläger’s play Aladdin. It’s one of the composer’s best-loved works, one that avoids musical clichés of the exotic Orient, conjuring scenes altogether more subtle and vivid. A major premiere by the orchestra’s Composer-in- Association, B Tommy Andersson, puts organist David Goode in the spotlight and the concert concludes with the sunniest and most intimate of Mahler’s symphonies – the concise No. 4, a work filled with birdsong and pastoral landscapes that features a child’s-eye view of Heaven in its final movement.