What's On / Proms by Day
FRIDAY 8 AUGUST
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5.15pm - 6.00pm: Proms Intro Composer Chen Yi and Stephen Hallett discuss tonight's programme.
Prom 29: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
- Date Friday 8 August 2008
- Time 7.00pm - c9.05pm
- Venue Royal Albert Hall
- Tickets £6-£35 price band A or Prom for £5
- Broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3. Available as audio on demand for the following week.
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Commissioned to mark the opening of the Beijing Olympics today, Chen Yi's Olympic Fire looks forward to the London Olympics in 2012, evoking the image of fire and representing the idea of a meeting of cultures.
Russian pianist Olga Kern, a Gold Medal winner of the 2001 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, plays the Paganini Rhapsody by Rachmaninov.
To close, Leonard Slatkin contrasts the sinuous Five Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' with the Sixth Symphony. The latter was written between 1944 and 1949 and though VW denied it carried any particular narrative, many have seen it as his response to the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's a work of violence, far removed from the pastoral voice with which he's so often associated.
- Chen Yi Olympic Fire (BBC commission: world premiere) (12 mins)
- Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (24 mins)
- Interval
- Vaughan Williams Five Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' (12 mins)
- Vaughan Williams Symphony No.6 in E minor (35 mins)
Olga Kern piano
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Leonard Slatkin conductor
Like this Prom? Try these:
Prom 30: BBC National Orchestra of Wales
- Date Friday 8 August 2008
- Time 10.00pm - c11.20pm
- Venue Royal Albert Hall
- Tickets £10-£15 price band D or Prom for £5
- Broadcast Live on BBC Radio 3. Available as audio on demand for the following week.
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Tonight's Late Night Prom under the direction of the charismatic Kristjan Järvi celebrates 20th-century Americana.
The Olympic theme takes to the sky with Michael Torke's most popular work, Javelin, a 1994 Olympics commission. John Adams's toe-tapping evocation of an earlier visit to Beijing and Duke Ellington's evocative Harlem offer two contrasting strands of 20th-century American music.
And, in a more serene mood, cellist Han-Na Chang joins the orchestra for 'Three Meditations' from Leonard Bernstein's theatrical Mass.
- Michael Torke Javelin (8 mins)
- John Adams The Chairman Dances (13 mins)
- Bernstein Mass - Three Meditations (17 mins)
- Ellington Harlem (16 mins)
There will be no interval
Han-Na Chang cello
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Kristjan Järvi conductor
BBC Radio 3
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