Mahler’s ‘Tragic’ Sixth Symphony

Live at the BBC Proms: the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, performs Mahler's Symphony No. 6 plus Kurtág's haunting elegy Stele, Op.33.

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

Kurtág: Stele, Op.33

c7.15pm
Interval: As György Kurtág celebrates his 100th birthday, the British composer Julian Anderson joins Andrew McGregor to talk about Kurtág's importance to the world of music and his unique compositional voice.

c7.35pm
Mahler: Symphony No.6

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Heroes fall but fight on in a programme of monumental soundscapes, poised on the edge of life and death. Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrate the centenary of Hungary’s greatest living composer, György Kurtág, with a rare performance of his powerful orchestral elegy Stele, whose kaleidoscopic textures capture the commotion of a battlefield as seen by a wounded man. In Kurtág’s own words: ‘The fighting rages all around him, but he sees only a very clear, very blue sky.’ Written at one of the happiest times of the composer’s life, Mahler’s premonitory ‘Tragic’ Symphony No. 6 – haunted by children’s voices, dances and marches, by losses and agonies yet to come – broods on human frailty and resilience in music that threatens to burst the banks of the classical symphony.