Oramo conducts Mahler's Fourth Symphony

A jingle of sleighbells, a flurry of flutes… it doesn’t take much to set Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in motion. But with Mahler, even the gentlest sounds can create a universe. From playful opening to final, blissful vision of heaven, the Fourth is a musical fairy tale like no other – an enchanting finish to a concert that begins with Dorothy Howell’s fantasy of a shape-shifting serpent and Kurt Weill’s typically feisty retelling of the myth of Orpheus. 

There’s nothing quite like that, either - part song, part violin concerto, but all Weill. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is lucky enough to have its own magical shape-shifter. Principal conductor Sakari Oramo is also a superb violinist and tonight he stars alongside soprano Anu Komsi at the centre of a concert where wonder comes as standard and nothing (except the music) is quite what it seems.