Prom 48 – Zubin Mehta Conducts The Australian World Orchestra

Part of the BBC Proms.

Celebrated conductor Zubin Mehta returns to the Proms for the first time in over a decade. He marks 2022’s UK/Australia Season cultural initiative with the Australian World Orchestra – a classical supergroup whose members are drawn from some 50 of the world’s greatest international orchestras. Brahms’ lyrical Second Symphony – clouds gathering just beneath its sunny surface – is prefaced by a sequence of early works by two starkly contrasting composers. The lushness of Webern’s Op. 1 Passacaglia gives way to the spare textures and telling gestures of the Six Pieces for Orchestra, while the Verlaine song-cycle Ariettes oubliées sees Debussy forging the expressive, speech-song word-setting that would redefine opera in Pelléas and Mélisande.