Prom 58: Tchaikovsky, Janáček, Szymanowski and Smith

Folk songs and folk tales run through this programme from the BBC SSO and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov. A runaway success at its premiere, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2 takes a different Ukrainian folk melody as the theme for each of its four movements, including the dizzyingly inventive finale, while a gruesome Czech legend provides the starting point for Janáček’s atmospheric orchestral ballad The Fiddler’s Child. Szymanowski’s exotic songs based on texts by the 14th-century Persian mystic poet Hafiz and a world premiere by American composer Linda Catlin Smith complete the concert.