Main content

Prom 10: Elgar’s Second Symphony

Live at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Proms: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth with cellist Laura van der Heijden. Music by Benjamin Britten, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Edward Elgar.

Live at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Proms: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth with cellist Laura van der Heijden. Music by Benjamin Britten, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Edward Elgar.

Presented by Andrew McGregor, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Benjamin Britten: Gloriana, Symphonic Suite
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: Cello Concerto, β€˜Earth, Sea, Air’

c.8.15pm
INTERVAL: The score for Elgar’s Second Symphony is headed by a quotation from a poem by Shelley β€œRarely, rarely comest thou spirit of delight”. To talk more about Percy Bysshe Shelley, Andrew McGregor is joined by Professor John Mullan, Lord Northcliffe Chair of Modern English Literature at University College London. A regular guest on the radio programme In Our Time, his many books include Lives of the Great Romantics by Their Contemporaries: Shelley.

c.8.35pm
Edward Elgar: Symphony No. 2 in E flat major

Laura van der Heijden, cello
ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Ryan Wigglesworth, conductor

Ryan Wigglesworth’s feast of English music opens with Britten’s suite of β€˜best bits’ from his 1953 Coronation opera Gloriana, all about the fraught relationship between Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex. Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s new climate change-themed Cello Concerto – premiered last year in Glasgow by tonight’s forces – takes inspiration from three disparate aspects of the natural world. Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 is considered by many to be the best ever written in England. β€˜I have put my soul into it,’ said the composer of this captivating journey, whose thrusting outward energy conceals deep inner poignancy.

24 days left to listen

2 hours, 44 minutes

Music Played

  • Benjamin Britten

    Gloriana - Symphonic Suite Op.53a

    Orchestra: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Ryan Wigglesworth.
  • Cheryl Frances-Hoad

    Concerto (Earth, Sea, Air)

    Performer: Laura van der Heijden. Orchestra: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Ryan Wigglesworth.
  • Pau Casals

    El Cant Dels Ocells

    Performer: Laura van der Heijden. Orchestra: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Ryan Wigglesworth.
  • Edward Elgar

    Symphony no. 2 in E flat major Op.63

    Orchestra: ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Ryan Wigglesworth.
  • Maurice Ravel

    La parade

    Performer: Alexandre Tharaud.
    • HARMONIA MUNDI.
  • Jean‐Philippe Rameau

    Chaconne (Les Indes galantes)

    Orchestra: Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century. Conductor: Frans BrΓΌggen.
    • Rameau: Les Indes Galantes Suite: Orchestra of the 18th Century, Bruggen.
    • Philips.
  • Louis Couperin

    Suite in D minor - Gavotte

    Performer: Pavel Kolesnikov.
    • Couperin: Dances From The Bauyn Manuscript.
    • Hyperion.
    • 5.
  • FranΓ§ois Couperin

    Les goΓ»ts rΓ©unis

    Performer: Jacqueline du PrΓ©. Performer: William Pleeth.
    • Warner.

Broadcast

  • Fri 26 Jul 2024 19:30

The home of classical music and the Proms on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

Every Proms concert is broadcast live on Radio 3 - don't miss a single one.