Prom 08: Britten, Lutoslawski & Thomas Ades

Another chance to hear the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms in music by Britten and Lutoslawski, alongside the premiere of a new work by the conductor, Thomas Adès
Presented by Katie Derham

Britten: Sinfonia da Requiem
Lutoslawski: Cello Concerto
c. 2.50pm
Adès: Totentanz (world premiere)

Paul Watkins (cello)
Christianne Stotijn (mezzo-soprano)
Simon Keenlyside (baritone)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Adès (condcutor)

Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem opens this programme of testimony and remembrance. Former BBC SO Principal Cellist Paul Watkins is the soloist in Lutoslawski's bleak and beautiful Cello Concerto, composed for and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich in a period of violent protest and political repression in Poland.

Thomas Adès conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Christianne Stotijn and Simon Keenlyside in the world premiere of his Totentanz, a commission in memory of Lutoslawski, which sets an anonymous 15th-century text that accompanied a frieze destroyed when Lübeck's Marienkirche was bombed in the Second World War.