Â鶹Éç

Live at the Â鶹Éç Proms: The Â鶹Éç National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales & Ryan Bancroft, with Mari Eriksmoen, Paula Murrihy, James Way and Szymon MechliÅ„ski, perform Szymanowski.

Presented by Alexandra Humphreys, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Lili Boulanger: Vieille prière bouddhique
Szymanowski: Stabat mater

c.8.10pm
Interval: Alexandra's guest is Peter Stanford - the author of books including Heaven: A Traveller’s Guide to the Undiscovered Country; The Devil: A Biography; Angels: A History and earlier this summer he published Gaudí: God's Architect about the Spanish designer of the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona who died a hundred years ago in June 1926

c.8.20pm
Messiaen: L’Ascension – four symphonic meditations
Strauss: Death and Transfiguration

Â鶹Éç National Orchestra of Wales
Â鶹Éç National Chorus of Wales
London Philharmonic Choir
Ryan Bancroft (conductor)
Mari Eriksmoen (soprano)
Paula Murrihy (mezzo-soprano)
James Way (tenor)
Szymon Mechliński (baritone)

Music pierces the veil between heaven and earth in a spiritually charged concert that opens in contemplation and ends in the blaze of ascension and transfiguration. Voices are raised in prayer in Lili Boulanger’s haunting Vieille prière bouddhique, intensified in the rapt, intimate intercessions of Szymanowski’s Stabat mater. Unearthly beauty is revealed in Messiaen’s L’Ascension, before a dying man is raised to heaven in Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration.