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Live at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Proms: ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ SSO & Thomas Dausgaard with pianist Alexander Melnikov. Schumann's Piano Concerto and James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie.

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London
Presented by Kate Molleson

Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra

8.05 Interval; Proms Plus: Composer Sir James MacMillan, 60 this year, discusses The Confession of Isobel Gowdie and talks about his inspiration and ideas. Recorded earlier at Imperial College Union. Producer Helen Garrison.

8.30 Part 2
Schumann: Piano Concerto
James MacMillan: The Confession of Isobel Gowdie

Alexander Melnikov (piano)
³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Thomas Dausgaard (conductor)

‘I always wanted a great bravura piece by him,’ wrote Clara Schumann of her husband. Her hope was answered in Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto a work whose broad, symphonic scope explores and tests the relationship between soloist and orchestra.

Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov joins the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scottish SO and its Chief Conductor Thomas Dausgaard for a programme that also includes the sweeping drama of Strauss’s tone-poem Also sprach Zarathustra, with its memorable opening sunrise (heard on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the violence and compassion of Sir James MacMillan’s early masterpiece The Confession of Isobel Gowdie, inspired by the execution of a 17th-century ‘witch’ and premiered at the Proms in 1990.