BBC Proms - 2010 - Prom 25 - BBC Singers, London Sinfonietta

From the BBC PROMS 2010 Presented by John Shea Another chance to hear this Late Night Prom which pairs music by Igor Stravinsky with one of the composers he most admired - J S Bach. At the heart of the concert the two composers overlap in Stravinsky's orchestral arrangement of one of the Bach's masterpieces: the great Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel Hoch", in which he subjects a Lutheran Christmas hymn to a staggering array of blindingly clever techniques - but all-the-while producing music so charming and fluent that the unsuspecting listener would never know what was going on below the surface. The concert ends with a work by Stravinsky which, like Bach's, combines austerity with a deeply-felt spirituality: Threni - setting words from the Biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah. Bach: Chorale "Ach mein herzliebes Jesulein" Bach: Canonic Variations on "Von Himmel hoch" BWV769 Bach arr. Stravinsky: Chorale Variations on "Von Himmel hoch" BWV 769 Stravinsky: Threni Elizabeth Atherton, soprano Hilary Summers, mezzo-soprano Alan Oke, tenor Andrew Kennedy, tenor David Wilson-Johnson, baritone Sir John Tomlinson, bass Daniel Hyde, organ BBC Singers London Sinfonietta David Atherton, conductor.