The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony with their new music director, 30-year-old Lithuanian Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla. Mozart's overture to The Magic Flute and a new piece by Hans Abrahamsen also feature in this broadcast presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch.
Written in 1877, Tchaikovsky's Fourth famously explores the forces of fate wrestling with human happiness, through music by turns tragic, yearning and celebratory.
The curtain-raiser is Mozart's overture to his opera The Magic Flute. It packs a punch in just a few minutes, with playful inventiveness and dramatic shifts between sparkling melodies and the famous 'masonic' three chords which open and punctuate it.
There's also the London premiere of Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's acclaimed new work 'let me tell you'. Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan balances extraordinary vocal dexterity with emotional subtlety to create a powerful interpretation of Hamlet's troubled Ophelia. Show less