Work: Old American Songs

Flags, balloons and musical revelry bring the BBC Proms season to a close. 

Mariss Jansons' festive, but poignant, farewell concert with the Royal Concergebouw Orchestra. Thomas Hampson contrasted folksongs by Mahler with Berio and Copland. Afterwards, while Jansons conducted Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

For most of us, the word ‘experimental’ probably provokes images of brass instruments filled with washing-up liquid or electrically manipulated sneezing sounds. But experimental doesn’t have to mean mental: it can simply refer to something original, something done differently.