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In 2020, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts. Tonight's prom finds two contrasting heroes sharing the limelight in an evening of musical drama from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its then new Chief Conductor, Andris Nelsons. Brett Dean’s trumpet concerto Dramatis personae, composed for tonight’s soloist, Swedish virtuoso HÃ¥kan Hardenberger, assigns all roles to the trumpet, casting him by turns as fallen superhero and accidental revolutionary. Mahler’s Sixth Symphony sees the composer himself as cursed hero – one, he explained, ‘on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him as a tree is felled’. The conclusion may be a tragic one but there are also scenes of beauty and joy in a work that includes a glowing theme associated with Mahler’s wife, Alma.

Presented by Hannah French

7.30pm
Brett Dean: Dramatis personae

c.8.05pm
Interval

c.8.20
Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor

HÃ¥kan Hardenberger (trumpet)
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

(From ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms 2015, 22 August)