Saint-Saëns’s ‘Organ’ Symphony

Live at the BBC Proms: the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Marie Jacquot in Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony with soloist Rachel Mahon. Plus Bizet, Holmès, and Sarasate.

Presented by Ian Skelly at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Georges Bizet: L' Arlésienne – Suite No. 1
Pablo de Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy

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Interval: Ian Skelly is joined by theatre director, composer, lyricist and French music enthusiast, Jeremy Sams to find out more about Augusta Holmès, a composer and also a mover and shaker in the cultural world of late nineteenth century Paris.

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Augusta Holmès: Andromède
Camille Saint‐Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, ‘Organ’

Inmo Yang (violin)
Rachel Mahon (organ)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Marie Jacquot (conductor)

An all-French programme whose first half – 150 years after the composer’s death – celebrates the bright, exotic colours conjured by Bizet. As well as a suite from his incidental music for ‘The Girl from Arles’, we hear the fantasy for violin and orchestra featuring music – including the famous ‘Habanera’ – from his best-loved opera, reimagined with explosive virtuosity by Sarasate. South Korean violinist Inmo Yang makes his Proms debut in the seductive, mercurial mantle of Bizet’s Gypsy-heroine. Saint-Saëns’s spectacular Symphony No. 3 puts the 9,999 pipes of the Royal Albert Hall organ (nicknamed the ‘Voice of Jupiter’) in the spotlight at the climax of this monumental work, and there’s more musical drama from gods and sea monsters in Augusta Holmès’s tone-poem Andromède.