Prom 19 – Strauss, Schumann & MacMillan

Part of the BBC Proms.

‘I always wanted a great bravura piece by him,’ wrote Clara Schumann of her husband. Her hope was answered in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto a work whose broad, symphonic scope explores and tests the relationship between soloist and orchestra. Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov joins the BBC Scottish SO and its Chief Conductor Thomas Dausgaard for a programme that also includes the sweeping drama of Strauss’s tone-poem Also sprach Zarathustra, with its memorable opening sunrise (heard on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the violence and compassion of Sir James MacMillan’s early masterpiece The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, inspired by the execution of a 17th century ‘witch’ and premiered at the Proms in 1990.