Prom 21: Strauss / Walton / Prokofiev

Strauss at his most passionate (and lascivious!) bookends a concert full of spectacle and panache. At its heart is the patriotic cantata Prokofiev drew from his music for Eisenstein’s epic film about a medieval Russian hero’s defeat of the Teutonic invader. That score had quite an impact on Walton’s own wartime work for the cinema but it is the subtler brio of his Violin Concerto that is heard before the interval.

Midori is one of relatively few international superstars to have taken up a piece whose formidable technical challenges were actively encouraged by Jascha Heifetz, its original soloist, but whose lyricism is all-pervasive too.