Episode 1

Penny Gore presents recent concerts by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Across the week the BBC SSO will play five Fifth Symphonies - a number which often seems to bring out the best in composers, from Beethoven through Tchaikovsky and Bruckner to Mahler and Sibelius.

The series starts today with the answer to the famous question 'Who wrote Beethoven's Fifth?' Tchaikovsky, meanwhile, contributes his Fourth Symphony - his Fifth will be along tomorrow.

Berlioz: Overture Le Corsaire
Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op 85
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 4 in F minor, Op 36
Alisa Weilerstein (cello),
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra,
Donald Runnicles (conductor)

Richard Strauss: Metamorphosen
BBC Scottish SO,
Donald Runnicles (conductor).

Beethoven: Symphony No 5 in C minor
BBC Scottish SO,
Nicholas McGegan (conductor).

This week's Thursday Opera Matinee continues Radio 3's Verdi 200 series of every opera Giuseppe Verdi ever wrote, with Ernani, his operatic version of Victor Hugo's saga of a nobleman turned bandit in sixteenth-century Spain.