Performer: Melanie Diener

Realism elbows aside romanticism in this dark departure from a star-studded tradition.

Following their acclaimed 'Bartók: Infernal Dance' series, the Philharmonia moved on Thursday to another of the twentieth century’s great composers: Richard Strauss. Strauss’s youthful tone poems, Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche were contrasted with his gloriously autumnal Four Last Songs, with Mozart’s 25th Symphony serving as a rather unexpected companion.

Prom 32 featured two works written in the same year, 1878, by composers who worked mainly in the same city, Vienna. Brahms was an established composer when he wrote his Violin Concerto for his virtuoso friend Joseph Joachim, while Mahler was just 17 when he started writing Das klagende Lied for a competition (the version played tonight was completed in 1880).