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Oramo conducts Mahler's Fourth Symphony

BBC Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo

Sakari Oramo conducting, with blue circular swirls framing him

Sakari Oramo conducts Mahler’s playful Fourth Symphony – and plays the violin too, as Kurt Weill retells the myth of Orpheus in his own, utterly original style. 

A jingle of sleighbells, a flurry of flutes… it doesn’t take much to set Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in motion. But with Mahler, even the gentlest sounds can create a universe. From playful opening to final, blissful vision of heaven, the Fourth is a musical fairy tale like no other – an enchanting finish to a concert that begins with Dorothy Howell’s fantasy of a shape-shifting serpent and Kurt Weill’s typically feisty retelling of the myth of Orpheus. 

There’s nothing quite like that, either - part song, part violin concerto, but all Weill. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is lucky enough to have its own magical shape-shifter. Principal conductor Sakari Oramo is also a superb violinist and tonight he stars alongside soprano Anu Komsi at the centre of a concert where wonder comes as standard and nothing (except the music) is quite what it seems.

This performance will finish at approximately 9.30pm, including a 20-minute interval

Promoted by BBC Symphony Orchestra

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