Prom 20 – Pekka Kuusisto

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto memorably set the entire Proms audience singing a Finnish folk song in 2016. Now he returns for a Prom joined by fellow Finnish folk musicians, which sprinkles rustic Finnish folk music among two pinnacles of Finnish orchestral sophistication: Sibelius’s great Romantic Violin Concerto (with Kuusisto as soloist) and his Fifth Symphony – a work suffused with light and autumnal warmth. Thomas Dausgaard conducts the symphony’s original, four-movement version, allowing a glimpse into the creative process of a work that Sibelius revised over a period of four years.