BBC Proms - 2009 - Prom 63: Xenakis, Rachmaninov, Shostakovich - Part 2

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) BBC Symphony Orchestra David Robertson (conductor) Xenakis: Ais Shostakovich: Symphony No 9 in E flat.