Proms: Mahler Chamber Orchestra with George Benjamin

8.00 Proms: Mahler Chamber Orchestra with George Benjamin

When the 20-year-old George Benjamin’s 'Ringed by the Flat Horizon' was performed at the Proms in 1980, it marked an arrival for a precociously talented young composer. Now established as one of the greats of his generation, he returns to conduct regular collaborators, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, in a concert featuring Ravel’s jazz-infused Piano Concerto, an operatic ‘pot-pourri’ by his friend, the late Oliver Knussen, the world première of his own Concerto for Orchestra and his new reworkings of Fantasias by Purcell, the ‘English Orpheus'.

George Benjamin Photo: Chris Christodoulou

Programme:

KNUSSEN: The Way to Castle Yonder;

PURCELL arr Benjamin: Three Consorts;

RAVEL: Piano Concerto in G;

BENJAMIN: Relativity Rag;

BENJAMIN: Concerto for Orchestra (première)

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano), Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by George Benjamin

Recorded in the Royal Albert Hall, London by the BBC (EBU)