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BBC Proms on the World Service

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Highlights from the BBC Proms, the UK's greatest classical music festival

Highlights from the BBC Proms, the UK's greatest classical music festival.

Memorable performances from the Proms season of classical concerts, recorded in the unique atmosphere of the Royal Albert Hall in London.

BBC Proms on the World Service: BBC Proms 2019: Painting pictures with orchestral colours

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Conductor Elim Chan at the 2019 BBC Proms

31/08/2019 GMT

Painting pictures with orchestral colours

BBC Proms 2019

BBC World Service - BBC Proms on the World Service, BBC Proms 2019, Painting pictures with orchestral colours

Mussorgsky's glittering Pictures at an Exhibition and Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture

Mendelssohn's Hebrides overture and Mussorgsky's glittering Pictures at an Exhibition performed at the BBC Proms.

Felix Mendelssohn: Hebrides overture 
Modest Mussorgsky, orch. Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Elim Chan, conductor

When the young Mendelssohn toured Scotland in 1829, he was expecting a country of ancient Gaelic bards and romantic deeds. It was the natural beauty of the Hebrides, however, that made a particularly strong impression on him and the overture that the islands inspired remains one of the most evocative symphonic seascapes ever composed.

Orchestral showpieces don't come more colourful than Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's daring set of piano pieces. The impetus was provided by a posthumous exhibition of works by the Russian painter and architect Viktor Hartmann and Mussorgsky composed the Pictures very quickly, in just a couple of weeks. He wrote to a friend: ‘sounds and ideas hung in the air, I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper’. But the work wasn’t published in his lifetime and it took until the 20th century for it to establish itself as a much-loved classic.

To introduce the concert, Andrew McGregor is joined at London’s Royal Albert Hall by Suzanne Aspden, Associate Professor of Music at Oxford University.

Photo: Conductor Elim Chan Credit: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

BBC Proms on the World Service: BBC Proms 2019

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Highlights from the 2019 season of BBC Proms, the UK's greatest classical music festival.

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BBC Proms 2019

Painting pictures with orchestral colours

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