Â鶹Éç

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony has one of classical music’s most famous openings. This iconic four-note motif returns again and again. Is it a thunderclap – or fate, knocking at the door? Make up your own mind at a Prom that also features lush orchestrations of music by the Romantic composer Sergey Rachmaninov, plus a rhapsodic work for solo violin by pioneering Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor – originally premiered in 1912, just weeks before the composer’s tragic death at the age of just 37.

Broadcast on Â鶹Éç Four on Friday 21 July, 8pm

Image: Tadaaki Otaka © Masahide Sato