Boléro and The Rite of Spring

Live at the BBC Proms: the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eva Ollikainen, performs Stravinsky, Ravel, Varèse and Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Cello Concerto with Johannes Moser.

Presented by Georgia Mann at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Edgard Varèse: Intégrales
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Before we fall (Cello Concerto) (BBC co-commission: UK premiere)
Maurice Ravel: Boléro

c.8.20pm
Interval Journalist and dance critic Sarah Crompton discusses the Ballet Russes company directed by Sergei Diaghilev which commissioned Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

c.8.40pm
Igor Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Johannes Moser (cello)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Eva Ollikainen (conductor)

Feel the beat. From the primal, hypnotic dances of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to the sensual throb of Ravel’s Boléro and the edgy thrum and twitch of Varèse’s Intégrales, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen get the musical pulse racing. They’re joined by ‘stupendous’ German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser for the UK premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Before we fall – a work that teeters on the edge of ‘a multitude of opposites’, torn between lyricism and distorted energy.