Beethoven’s Eroica

Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the first live Prom of the 2020 season. Beethoven’s epic Third Symphony sits alongside Copland’s Quiet City and a Basquiat-inspired world premiere from Hannah Kendall. The BBC Singers perform Eric Whitacre's Sleep.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall
Presented by Georgia Mann and Petroc Trelawny

Hannah Kendall: Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama (BBC commission: world premiere)

Eric Whitacre: Sleep*

Aaron Copland: Quiet City

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’

BBC Singers*
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Nicholas Chalmers (conductor)*
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra kick off this season’s live offering with a specially-commissioned work by English composer Hannah Kendall. Tuxedo: Vasco ‘de’ Gama takes as its title a quote from American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s matrix of hieroglyphs, symbols and words, and it launches a voyage across the Atlantic that takes us via Eric Whitacre’s tender Sleep, sung by the BBC Singers, to the expansive, desolate sound-world of Copland’s Quiet City.

For the concert’s climax we plunge into the stormy waters of Beethoven’s revolutionary ‘Eroica’ Symphony, noted by one early reviewer for its ‘strange modulations and violent transitions’ – a passionate musical vision of heroism.