MIRGA GRAŽINYTE-TYLA & LEILA JOSEFOWICZ @THE PROMS

After their last year’s triumph, the CBSO returns to the PROMS in a concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto & Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5

After her triumphant and widely celebrated Proms debut with the CBSO last year, Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla, the dynamic young Lithuanian Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, returns with a programme that sets Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony against a world premiere by Gerald Barry and Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.

The CBSO and Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla, the first woman conductor who took over one of the world’s leading orchestras, explore in their concert the theme of political and artistic freedom. Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, written for his rescue opera “Fidelio”, celebrates the triumph of truth over tyranny in music of radiant beauty, while his Fifth Symphony rewrites the rules for the Classical symphony. “Canada” the new work, by maverick composer Gerald Barry, is inspired by revolutionary events in Canada’s history, and sets the text from “Fidelio’s” Prisoners’ Chorus, interpreted here by the English tenor Allan Clayton, in a new context.

The concert will be completed with a rendition of Tchaikovsky’s neo- Classical masterpiece, his Violin Concerto in D major, which was originally deemed unplayable. The brilliant and fierce solo part will be interpreted by no one less than the Canadian violin virtuoso Leila Josefowicz.