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Proms 2024
27 Aug 2023, Royal Albert Hall
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Proms 2023 Prom 56: Rattle conducts Mahler’s Ninth

Prom 56
Prom 56: Rattle conducts Mahler’s Ninth
19:30 Sun 27 Aug 2023 Royal Albert Hall
Sir Simon Rattle’s final UK performance as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. He conducts Mahler’s epic farewell symphony, haunted by loss but urgently clinging to dance and song, alongside Poulenc’s choral masterpiece Figure humaine.
Sir Simon Rattle’s final UK performance as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. He conducts Mahler’s epic farewell symphony, haunted by loss but urgently clinging to dance and song, alongside Poulenc’s choral masterpiece Figure humaine.

Programme

About This Event

In Mahler’s Ninth Symphony the composer – who would not live to hear its premiere – bid ‘farewell to all whom he loved’. The words ‘Leb’ wohl!’ (‘farewell’) are written onto the score itself, transformed into a theme that becomes the heartbeat of the whole work. It’s a poignant choice for Sir Simon Rattle’s final UK performance as Music Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. Death and life collide in a symphony haunted by loss but urgently clinging to dance and song. The finale, however, looks beyond, closing with a vision of distant hills where the sun is shining. Opening the Prom is Poulenc’s choral masterpiece Figure humaine, a hymn to freedom from occupied France, performed by the Â鶹Éç Singers.

Broadcast on Â鶹Éç TV

Image: Sir Simon Rattle © Oliver Helbig

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