Prom 51 – Lalo, Brahms and Franck

Part of the BBC Proms.

Franz Liszt declared Cesar Franck’s organ works to be worthy of ‘a place beside the masterpieces of Bach’, and it’s the organ’s thick sonorities and glowing weight that seem to lie behind the composer’s mature Symphony in D minor – a work of contrasts, which opens in almost Wagnerian grandeur and closes with a radiant finale. Music by Franck’s French contemporary Edouard Lalo opens the concert – the stirring, filmic overture to his medieval Breton opera Le roi d’Ys. At just 21, the Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich is a major new talent, and makes his Proms debut as soloist in one of the great Romantic violin concertos. Fabien Gabel conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra.