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On Opened Ground was a milestone in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s career.

It was the first work British composer Turnage wrote for a major American orchestra, commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra for the Russian violist Yuri Bashmet. This is the work’s first performance at the Proms, played by violist Lawrence Power, who has championed it ever since giving its British premiere back in 2004.

This viola concerto pays tribute to the poet Seamus Heaney who called a collection of his poems Opened Ground. The title of the work may in part be a pun on its inclusion of a chaconne, on a ‘ground bass’, that opens out into a coda at the end of the piece.

With violist Lawrence Power and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Oliver Knussen.