Episodes
| Episode | Title | First Broadcast | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Part 1 | 20090902 | From the Royal Albert Hall, London. Presented by Christopher Cook. The BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Xenakis's Nomos Gamma, with 98 players dispersed among the audience in the arena, including eight percussionists. The transience of life and the finality of death are then confronted in Rachmaninov's evocative Stygian tone poem The Isle of the Dead, composed in 1909. Leigh Melrose (baritone) Colin Currie (percussion) David Robertson (conductor) Xenakis: Nomos Gamma Rachmaninov: The Isle of the Dead. BBC Symphony Orchestra in Xenakis: Nomos Gamma and Rachmaninov: The Isle of the Dead. |
| 02 | Part 2 | 20090902 | From the Royal Albert Hall, London. Presented by Christopher Cook. The BBC Symphony Orchestra perform Xenakis's Ais, a work confronting the transience of life and the finality of death. A searing setting of ancient Greek texts by Homer and Sappho, with a wildly wide-ranging vocal line of powerful elemental utterances, it features a solo percussionist pitted against the orchestra. The concert concludes with Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony from 1945, a work that seems almost to laugh off the horrors of war. Leigh Melrose (baritone) Colin Currie (percussion) David Robertson (conductor) Xenakis: Ais Shostakovich: Symphony No 9 in E flat. BBC Symphony Orchestra/David Robertson in Xenakis: Ais and Shostakovich: Symphony No 9. |