Prom 62 – Berliner Philharmoniker and Kiril Petrenko – Mahler’s Seventh

Part of the BBC Proms.

One of the world’s great orchestras, the Berliner Philharmoniker, returns to the Proms under Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko with Mahler’s richly ambiguous Symphony No. 7. Eeriness, eroticism, delirium and darkness run through this mercurial work. At its centre are two ‘night music’ movements – the first black and heavy, the second lyrical and bright with serenades – but there’s also a musical phantasmagoria of a Scherzo as well as bucolic visions, love songs and a finale that blazes with light and hope. ‘The symphony must be like the world,’ Mahler once declared: ‘it must embrace everything.’ And with his Seventh he does.