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Live at the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms: Kirill Petrenko conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Smetana's Má vlast. Víkingur Ólafsson joins the orchestra for Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto.

Presented by Martin Handley, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor

c.8.10pm
INTERVAL: The Listening Service
Tom Service examines the cultural significance of Smetana’s six-part orchestral masterpiece, exploring the poetry and politics of a piece deeply embedded in the Czech national consciousness. Combining countryside and folklore, myth and majesty, Ma Vlast is a Romantic symphonic work par excellence, but Tom considers the reasons it remains such a powerful and important piece today.

c.8.30pm
Bedrich Smetana: Má vlast

Víkingur Ólafsson (piano)
Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

The first of the Berliner Philharmoniker’s two Proms this season comprises a pair of musical love letters. One is to a person: Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto was written for his wife Clara (whose own concerto is performed on the First Night). It’s a work whose supple and sensual music offers touching insights into one of the most passionate musical romances of the 19th century. The other was written to a country. In Má vlast Bedřich Smetana – one of this year’s Czech anniversary composers, born 200 years ago – transferred all his love for his Bohemian homeland into a majestic sequence of six symphonic poems: pictures of his country’s landscape and history. With the exceptional pianist Víkingur Ólafsson for company, Kirill Petrenko conducts his illustrious orchestra in music that comes straight from the heart.