Proms Plus [BBC Proms]

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The Aldeburgh World Orchestra gathers together some of the finest emerging talent from over 30 countries, encapsulating the Olympic ideals of excellence, youth and diversity. It is part of Aldeburgh Music's Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. Established 40 years ago, the Programme has made Aldeburgh one of the world's most important centres for supporting emerging musical talent. The Aldeburgh World Orchestra illustrates the far-reaching extent of Aldeburgh Music's artist development work, which now offers year-round training and performance opportunities to emerging professional musicians from across the globe.

Planning for the AWO began three years ago, building on Aldeburgh Music's existing artist networks and reaching out beyond its traditional international links to embrace other conservatoires, festivals and youth orchestras around the world. These include the South African National Youth Orchestra, the Yong Siew Toh Conservatoire in Singapore, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, the Buchman-Mehta School of Music in Israel, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellowship scheme and many more. In addition to identifying exceptional talent through tried and tested routes, Aldeburgh Music also initiated the use of a new online audition platform, so that as many young artists as possible - regardless of location or background - could apply.

Stephen Johnson and members of the Aldeburgh World Orchestra introduce Prom 21.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, performs the winning entries from this year's Proms Inspire Young Composers' Competition.

Now in its thirteenth year, the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composers' Competition continues to provide a platform for budding composers across the UK, providing what most composers only dream of - the chance to have their music played by professional musicians and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Entries of all genres and for any instrumentation are welcomed and each composition is judged on the following criteria - compositional idea, originality, creativity and appropriate technical ability. The only rules are that entries should last no longer than five minutes and be scored so that other musicians can perform them.

Inspire Young Composers' Concert with the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Originally recorded with an audience at BBC Proms on 26 July 2018.

Tim Birkhead and Helen Macdonald on humanity's long relationship with birds.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The poem tells the story of a disillisioned young man's overseas journey and was inspired by Byron's own travels in southern Europe. But it also launched the idea of the Byronic hero, who became so influential in the romantic era. Tonight's BBC Proms concert features Hector Berlioz's musical version - Harold in Italy.

Matthew Sweet guests are two writers who have re-interpreted Byron for the twenty-first century.Tom Holland has written a novel based on the myth of Byron's life and work called 'The Vampyre'. He describes Byron as the 'David Bowie of his age' - able to reinvent himself to the world, but not just a doomed poet - also a brilliantly successful writer. Benjamin Markovits has written the first parts of a trilogy about Byron's life and loves.

Their discussion is recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of this year's Proms Literary Festival.

Matthew Sweet hosts a discusson on Lord Byron and his breakthrough poem.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Louise Fryer explores the music and symbolism in Debussy's only completed opera.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Matthew Sweet presents.

A discussion of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, the inspiration for My Fair Lady.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Katie Derham

The BBC Concert Orchestra and principal conductor Keith Lockhart are joined by violinist Chloe Hanslip in this concert of music for the silver screen from both sides of the Atlantic.

Celebrating the centenary of his birth there's a tribute to the film composers' composer Bernard Herrmann, alongside music by today's greatest living exponent John Williams. Passages from Henry V accompany William Walton's iconic music, and there's a tribute to the late John Barry with two of his most famous themes. With additional music by Ennio Morricone, Richard Rodney Bennett at 75, and a brand new suite from last year's film Norwegian Wood - music by BBC Concert Orchestra's composer in residence, Jonny Greenwood - this promises to be a spectacular celebration of the best of classic and modern film music.

Herrmann: Music from The Man Who Knew Too Much, Citizen Kane, North by Northwest and Psycho

Ennio Morricone: Cinema Paradiso - theme

Walton arr. Muir Mathieson: Henry V - suite

Chlo뀀 Hanslip (violin)

Keith Lockhart (conductor).

The BBC Concert Orchestra performs film music, including Herrmann, Morricone and Walton.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Screenwriter Ronald Harwood and pianist Neil Brand discuss the role of music in film.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The opera tells the story of Richard Nixon's historic three day visit to China in 1972. Three years into his presidency the announcement that the anti-communist Republican president would visit Mao Tse-tung's China to improve international relations made world headlines. The visit was closely followed by the international press and scenes of Nixon and his wife Pat were widely televised around the globe. Composer John Adams describes this clash of capitalism and communism as 'an epochal event, one whose magnitude is hard to imagine from our present perspective'.

Rana Mitter and Shuyun Sun debate the political context of John Adams' Nixon in China.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner talks to Tom Service about tonight's performance of Der Freischütz by Weber in the version reimagined for French audiences by Berlioz. This work is rarely performed and is regarded as the corner-stone of German Romantic opera. Recorded earlier this evening at the Royal College of Music, London.

John Eliot Gardiner talks to Tom Service about the Proms performance of Der Freischutz.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Louise Fryer talks to Ara Guzelimian from New York's Juilliard School of Music and Jonathan Freeman-Attwood from London's Royal Academy of Music about their respective music colleges and the long-standing series of transatlantic collaborations between the two which tonight's Prom showcases.

Louise Fryer welcomes guests from New York and London music colleges.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Susan Hitch hosts this discussion recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Sarah Dunant and Margaret Kean on the influence of Dante from Shakespeare to the Beats.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Night Waves presenter Matthew Sweet hosts this discussion recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Comedians Natalie Haynes and Steve Punt talk about their favourite humorous writing.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Rana Mitter is joined by Daniel Karlin and Tariq Ali to discuss Rudyard Kipling.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The programme is the first in a new series, part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

I Fagiolini director Robert Hollingworth discusses his favourite works of fiction.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The last decade has seen Scandinavian crime fiction become a publishing sensation. But the phenomenon began in the 1960s with a Swedish couple, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, who wrote the Martin Beck series of novels, written to highlight what they saw as the degeneration of Sweden. Henning Mankell's Inspector Kurt Wallender is now as famous for Kenneth Branagh's TV portrayal and for the Swedish television adaptation as it is for Mankell's original novels and Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium Trilogy' has sold over 40 million copies and has been filmed in both Sweden and America. So what is the international appeal of the novels famed for their bleak and cold plots?

The crime writers Louise Welsh and Val McDermid explore their favourite Scandinavian writers and discuss the success of the Scandinavian genre, how political the books are and why the protagonists tend to the stereotype of the Scandinavian melancholic.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Val McDermid and Louise Welsh on the explosion in Scandinavian crime writing.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch discusses Radio 3's 2009 anniversary composers with members of the OAE.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch discusses Bach with Andrew Litton, Tarik O'Regan and Alissa Firsova.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Petroc Trelawny talks to broadcaster John Suchet, a passionate devotee of Beethoven.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Rector of the Royal College of Art and former head of the Arts Council Christopher Frayling joins novelist DJ Taylor to discuss the wider importance of key cultural events in the year 1934, which saw the death of Holst and Delius, and the birth of Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. Among the topics they discuss are H G WELLS's futuristic novel The Shape of Things to Come and the arrival of the Bauhaus designer emigres in Britain.

Christopher Frayling and DJ Taylor discuss the key cultural events in the year 1934.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of the Proms Literary Festival, prior to a BBC Proms performance of Humperdinck's operatic version of the story.

Ian McMillan is joined by Anne Fine and Margaret Rustin to discuss Hansel and Gretel.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Pasternak is most famous in the UK for his sprawling epic novel Dr Zhivago which sets the concerns, desires and stories of individuals in the vast landscape of Russian revolutionary politics and history. Susan and guests discuss the circumstances of the book's publication: it was smuggled out of Russia during the height of the Cold War, and the subsequent film adaptation by David Lean made Pasternak a global literary hero. But does that tell the real story of Pasternak? Jonathan Myerson and Donald Rayfield explore the misunderstood complexity of the novel, and the fact that the compromises Pasternak adopted in his life mean he's no straightforward Cold War darling of the West.

Recorded in front of an audience, with readings performed by Adjoa Andoh, at the Royal College of Music just before BBC Prom 41 which has a Russian flavour with music from Scriabin and Stravinsky and is conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Susan Hitch explores the life and work of author and poet Boris Pasternak.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Poetry and music have been associated from the earliest tradition of oral epic poetry, and music has inspired poets from Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson, for example in her work 'Musicians wrestle everywhere

Tonight's guests, David Harsent and Jo Shapcott, have both been inspired to writer poems about music. David's recent collection includes 'Duet' and 'Harp Strings' and he has regularly worked with Harrison Birtwistle to write libretti for opera, including The Minotaur. Jo Shapcott poems include 'Shapcott's Variations' and she has written lyrics for or had her words set to music by composers such as John McCabe, Detlev Glamert, Errolyn Wallen and John Woolrich.

David Harsent and Jo Shapcott join Ian McMillan to explore how the subject of music itself inspires poets, the difference between writing poetry and writing libretti, and the orchestration of a poem.

Ian McMillan is joined by Jo Shapcott and David Harsent to explore poetry about music.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755, held centre stage in defining and describing the English language for at least 150 years until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary. Personally unimposing - he was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, and suffered from an assortment of physical tics which may have been Tourettes - Johnson rose from a modest background as the son of a bookseller in Uttoxeter to become one of the most quoted men of English letters.

His idiosyncratic dictionary is laden with his own personality, and he refers to words like lunch as 'as much food as one's hands can hold' and lexicographer as 'a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words'.

Ian McMillan and Lynda Mugglestone explore the myth and reality of Samuel Johnson.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Both Schiller and Beethoven saw Europe torn apart by war and revolution. Our guests tonight discuss how the optimism of the Ode to Joy, Friedrich Schiller's great work on unity and brotherhood, is tempered by an anxiety about the realities of war. The sentiments of the poem have a continuing universal appeal - it was performed by Leonard Bernstein to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, has become the anthem of the European Union, and Billy Bragg created a version to be sung by choirs of English schoolchildren.

Rana Mitter and guests explore different versions of the Ode to Joy in a Proms Literary Festival programme recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Producer: Allegra McIlroy.

Rana Mitter and guests discuss Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Watch a webcast of the discussion - the link is below

Former poet laureate Andrew Motion introduces a personal choice of poems by another poet Laureate, Alfred Tennyson. Actress Fiona Shaw performs Andrew's choices, including excerpts from In Memoriam and The Lady of Shallot in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Andrew also talks to Matthew Sweet about Tennyson, revealing him to be a much stranger poet than is generally believed - a troubled figured, rhapsodic in his poetry, both antiquated and modern. In his life he was touched by great joy and tragedy, yet was always willing to grasp the great issues of the Victorian Age, of history, faith and evolution.

Andrew Motion introduces a personal choice of Tennyson's poems. Readings are by Fiona Shaw

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina - a writer whose works regularly appear in the top ten of the greatest novels of all time.

Susan's guests on stage are James Meek, former Moscow correspondent and prize-winning author of 'The People's Act of Love' set in turn of the century Russia, and Anthony Briggs, translator of a recent edition of War and Peace and a biographer of Tolstoy.

We know Tolstoy is a great writer - but what about the man himself? James Meek and Anthony Briggs debate his personal influence. Why did he become such an international philosphical celebrity - with hordes of reporters despatched to his deathbed, logging Tolstoy's last hours and morsels consumed in minute detail? Do we need to remember him more as a spiritual teacher who counted Ghandhi amongst his followers, rather than a novelist? And do James and Anthony believe his books give signs of an author who embraced the diversity of human experience - or reveal what he believed to be his misanthropy and pessimism?

Part of a series of debates at this year's Proms Literary Festival celebrating the three Russian authors whose anniversaries fall this year: Chekhov, Pasternak and Tolstoy himself.

Producer: Natalie Steed.

Susan Hitch discusses the life, work and legacy of author Leo Tolstoy.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

He argues that Berlin is the 'Ur' city of the 20th century: it was the city to which people fled after the Russian Revolution, the permissive, cultural heart of the Weimar Republic and the centre of the Cold War. The influence of Berlin on British writers and artists has been tremendous and there'll be excerpts of writing by Stephen Spender, Christopher Isherwood, John Le Carre and David Bowie.

Their conversation is recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of this year's Proms Literary Festival.

Anne McElvoy is joined by novelist Philip Kerr to discuss writing inspired by Berlin.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Rana Mitter asks whether Beethoven still embodies the archetypal romantic artist.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Kevin Jackson and Nick Dear discuss why Bryon's life and work had such an enduring appeal. Is it the story of his reckless love affairs, international political activism and early death after defending Greek liberty - as portrayed in Nick's film, which starred Jonny Lee Miller as the poet himself? Or is it actually the power of his writing itself - from Don Juan, to the Prisoner of Chillon and the creation of the 'Byronic hero'.

Byron's writings borught to life some of the most enduring romantic heroes in literature - and they have had a powerful attraction for other artists. The 2010 Proms features several adaptations of Byron's work by composers - and this literary event precedes a concert featuring two settings by Schumann and Tchaikovsky of Byron's metaphysical poem Manfred, about a Swiss noble who seeks forgiveness from spirits for his past actions.

The Proms Literary Festival is now in its third year - tackling some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience right next door to the Albert Hall at the Royal College of Music and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Night Waves presenter Matthew Sweet hosts this Byron debate recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Readings by Tobias Beer

Producer: Laura Thomas.

Kevin Jackson and Nick Dear discuss romantic poet and political hero Byron.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

From John Donne to Elizabeth Bishop to John Berryman, writers have used poetry to contemplate the sacred. And poetry has in turn inspired composers in their own exploration of the divine, from Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, a personal favourite of James Macmillan, to Alexander Scriabin's The Divine Poem which is part of tonight's BBC Prom.

James Macmillan and Michael Symmons Roberts have often worked together to create new poems and new compositions. They join presenter Susan Hitch and an audience at the Royal College of Music to share their ideas on why poetry is the written form that lends itself to musings on the divine, why it continues to appeal to composers, and how music and language can illuminate each other.

Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of this year's Proms Literary Festival.

Producer: Allegra McIlroy.

James MacMillan and poet Michael Symmons Roberts on links between poetry and the divine.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Producer: Lisa Davis.

Matthew Sweet on the Edwardian cultural landscape in 1910.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Rana Mitter discusses the appeal of the stories at the heart of Bollywood cinema.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Actor Andrew Sachs offers his own dramatic version of Quixote, spurred on by Ian McMillan and literary critic John Mullan's reflections on the character and his followers in the world of letters.

Actor Andrew Sachs presents his own dramatic version of Quixote.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

What did Mahler owe to his study of Nietzsche? Were there many musicians who knew of and were inspired by Freud's Interpretation of Dreams when it appeared in 1899? And how did Wittgenstein respond to the music of late 19th century Vienna? The Austrian capital was a place of challenge and iconoclasm during this period and the boundaries between concert hall and study were blurring as thinkers and musicians re-evaluated the nature of human experience.

Philosophers Roger Scruton and AC Grayling on intellectual life in fin de siecle Vienna.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

It's one of the most important sources for the English Restoration period - and from 1660 onwards provides eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Plague of London, the Great Fire of London and the second Anglo-Dutch War.

But why does Pepys' work still talk to us across three and a half centuries? Is it the intimate confessions of his sexual misdemeanours - including being caught in flagrante by his wife? Or the frustrated insecurity about his career and need to work harder? Or is it the fascinating timeless window on one man's inner self?

Jenny Uglow's recently published biography of Charles II's reign draws heavily on Pepys for the set-pieces of the age. Max Hastings has recommended reading Pepys at bedtime as a corrective to any ideas that we face unprecedented disorder in our own age. They bring their own perspectives on Pepys to an audience at the Royal College of Music as part of the Proms Literary Festival. The Verb's Ian McMillan is the host.

Max Hastings, Jenny Uglow and Ian McMillan discuss Samuel Pepys' famous diary.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the shared themes of the Romantic movement.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

One is held-up as the archetypal story of doomed young lovers. The other is a timeless tragic love-triangle. Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde have bequeathed powerful ideas about the course of true love. In fact, medieval and early modern storylines have proved remarkably robust in shaping the way we think about love. But can we trace the components of the great romances of myth and literature? Passion, ardour, youth and violence perhaps? And how do some of the other great historical figures add to our understanding, for instance, Anthony and Cleopatra or Dido and Aeneas? Howard Jacobson and Mary Beard join presenter Rana Mitter and an audience at the BBC Proms Literary Festival to discuss what they believe to be the great examples of the love affair and choose their favourite readings to illustrate how language evokes their power.

Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music before Prom 21 which features Berlioz and Wagner's classic interpretations of these two stories.

Howard Jacobson, Mary Beard and Rana Mitter discuss what makes a great love story.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

How well do the great works of fiction portray instruments in their pages? Music critic and Professor of English, Peggy Reynolds is joined by a cellist from the BBC Symphony Orchestra to explore the cello's literary life across the ages - and to perform its literary incarnations.

Night Waves presenter Rana Mitter hosts this discussion recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Peggy Reynolds explores the cello in literature.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts. They're recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just before the concerts themselves.

Matthew Sweet discusses the appeal of the Faust myth with Mark Ravenhill and Simon Callow.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The programme is part of Radio 3's Proms Plus Literary exploring some of the literary and cultural dimensions of this year's Proms concerts, in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music, right next door to the Albert Hall and just in advance of the concerts themselves.

Night Waves presenter Matthew Sweet hosts this discussion on the French classics recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.

Writers Kate Mosse and Edmund de Waal discuss the great French literary classics.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Founded in 1954, the S　o Paulo Symphony Orchestra is the leading and largest orchestra in Latin America with 115 musicians and 52 singers. The orchestra performs over 100 concerts every season at its home, the Sala S　o Paulo, a restored train station, inaugurated in 1999 as a 1500-seat concert hall, and tours throughout Brazil and abroad. It also runs a publishing house dedicated to the works of Brazilian composers, and a composer in residence program, the most recent incumbent of which is Magnus Lindberg. The orchestra is dedicated to musical education - their outreach programmes were attended by 87,000 children and teenagers last year alone.

Marin Alsop and Cathy Graham discuss the S\u00e3o Paulo Symphony Orchestra and music in Brazil.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Presented by Andrew McGregor

Andrew McGregor and musicians of the BBCSO and the BBC Singers discuss Schoenberg's epic cantata Gurrelieder. This enormous work, a medieval love-tragedy, is an early masterpiece in which Schoenberg's late-romantic voluptuous style attains a radiant C-major apotheosis.

Andrew McGregor and musicians of the BBC SO discuss Schoenberg's epic cantata Gurrelieder.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Pat Barker is the author of novels including her Regeneration Trilogy, Life Class, The Silence of the Girls and Noonday. Giles Fraser is an English Anglican priest, journalist and broadcaster.

Producer Laura Thomas

Recorded with an audience at the BBC Proms 21 August 2012.

Pat Barker and Giles Fraser talk to Ian McMillan about books by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The Ancient Greeks often preferred to take sea journeys rather than risk encounters with brigands and travelling through mountain passes inland and colonised all round the Black Sea and Mediterranean. In the writings of Xenophon and Homer, Greek heroes show skills at navigating and fighting on sea and the sea shore is a place people go to think.

Sir Barry Cunliffe is Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford and the author of books including Facing the Ocean - the Atlantic and its peoples; Europe Between the Oceans; By Steppe, Desert and Ocean - the Birth of Eurasia.

Edith Hall is Professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College, London. Her books include Introducing The Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind; Aristotle's Way - How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Mind; A People's History of Classics.

You can find her discussing her campaign for schools across the UK to teach classics in a Free Thinking discussion called Rethinking the Curriculum https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08hq0ht

Recorded in front of an audience at the BBC Proms on 28 July 2017.

Edith Hall and Sir Barry Cunliffe consider the role of the sea in Greek myth and legend.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom Service

Mahler's epic Sixth Symphony, the Tragic, complete with fateful hammer blows: Semyon Bychkov

conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Plus an early piano concerto by Richard Strauss.

In Semyon Bychkov's second Prom this season, he conducts one of Mahler's most perfectly realised works, 'the only Sixth, despite the 'Pastoral' ', in the words of Alban Berg. This is music of exceptional range and power, whose hammer-blows seem to portend the crises in Mahler's own life and the wider world. The curtain-raiser is a mini-concerto with echoes of Brahms and Liszt, especially in its treatment of the piano.Kirill Gerstein, an exceptional artist with roots in jazz as well as the classics, makes his first Proms appearance in the main hall.

R. Strauss: Burleske

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

This Prom will be repeated on Sunday 28th August at 2pm.

BBC Symphony Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov and Kirill Gerstein (piano) in Strauss: Burleske.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Matthew Sweet and guests reassess Prince Albert and his legacy, the Royal Albert Hall.

Originally recorded before an audience at the Royal College of Music at the BBC Proms on 23 July 2014.

Michael Symmons Roberts and Richard Coles on the literature that inspired John Tavener.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Matthew Sweet and his guests, the award-winning poet and librettist Michael Symmons Roberts and musician, priest and broadcaster Richard Coles, explore the inspiration John Tavener took from poems written by George Herbert, John Donne and William Blake. Tonight's Proms broadcast includes The Protecting Veil, which earnt Tavener a nomination for the Mercury Prize and whilst this work takes its cue from an icon and the Orthodox feast of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God, other pieces by Tavener draw on literary sources.

Originally recorded before an audience at the Royal College of Music at the BBC Proms on 23 July 2014.

Michael Symmons Roberts and Richard Coles on the literature that inspired John Tavener.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The classical tale of Orpheus has influenced musicians and writers from Igor Stravinsky to John Milton to Nick Cave. Orpheus, whose lyre and songs could charm even Hades, king of the underworld, journeys into the kingdom of the dead to plead for the release of his wife Eurydice. Succeeding where all others have failed, he is offered a deal. He can take his wife with him, but only if he makes his return journey without turning to look at her as she walks behind him back into the land of the living. Where his heroism and charm have succeeded, his human flaw of curiosity proves his undoing.

Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, on the powerful classical myth of Orpheus.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

As part of the festival's Victorian season, Matthew Sweet is joined by Roy Hattersley and Valentine Cunningham as they champion the Victorian novel in all its forms. From the elegance of Jane Austen and the thrilling sensation novels of Wilkie Collins to the stately realism of George Eliot and the bleakness of Thomas Hardy, the Victorian novel is a treasure trove of literary riches.

Roy and Valentine argue that these should still be seen as pinnacles of English literature and their mix of character, social upheaval, storytelling, melodrama, malign fate and high style demonstrate a commitment to portray the whole of life that is as relevant today as it has ever been.

With Matthew Sweet. Roy Hattersley and Valentine Cunningham champion the Victorian novel.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

Producer: Eliane Glaser.

Ian McMillan and guests celebrate the work of William Golding.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.

The world's greatest classical music festival - stunning performances and collaborations.