Prom 70 – Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nezet-Seguin

Part of the BBC Proms.

Making its first Proms appearance for over a decade, the mighty Philadelphia Orchestra and Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin return with one of the greatest symphonies in the repertoire. With its ‘strange modulations and violent transitions’, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ offers a passionate, protesting vision of heroism that surges with rebellious energy. Award-winning soprano Angel Blue is the soloist in an all-American first half that pairs Samuel Barber’s ‘lyric rhapsody’ Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – conjuring the sights, sounds and smells of the city as seen through the eyes of a small boy – with This Is Not a Small Voice, a setting by American composer Valerie Coleman of a poem by Philadelphia’s former Poet Laureate Sonia Sanchez celebrating the power of Black voices, both individually and collectively.