Prom 15: Beethoven & Carter

Beethoven Grosse Fuge 17’ Elliott Carter Oboe Concerto 21’ interval Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor 32’ Nicholas Daniel oboe BBC Symphony Orchestra David Robertson conductor As well as marking Elliott Carter’s centenary, tonight’s Prom celebrates the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, premiered in 1808. Carter’s singlemovement Oboe Concerto from 1986–7 finds, in the composer’s words, ‘the soloist accompanied in its widely varying, mercurial moods by a percussionist and four violas’. Apart from opening with the most famous motif in the whole of Western music, Beethoven’s Fifith is a study in coiled tension and release that never fails to thrill. And to open the evening, the full-string version of Beethoven’s muscular Grosse Fuge, originally written as the composer’s first thoughts for one of his late, great string quartets. Tickets cannot be exchanged refunded or resold.