BBC Proms 2024 - Prom 05 - Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid (320kbps .mp3)

Live at the BBC Proms: Ryan Bancroft and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid and Schoenberg's Pelleas and Melisande.


01. Schoenberg - Pelleas and Mellisande, Op 5
01a. Introduction to Pelleas and Mellisande
01b. Outro to Pelleas and Mellisande and interval
Penny is joined in the Radio 3 box by Professor Sarah Peverley from the University of Liverpool, an expert on the Middle Ages and mythical creatures who is writing a book The Mermaid’s Tale: A Cultural History of Mermaids. Sarah is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and having been chosen as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, she has contributed to Free Thinking and Radio 3’s The Essay.
02. Zemlinsky - The Mermaid
02b. Introduction to Zemlinsky's The Mermaid

BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Ryan Bancroft (conductor)

At a concert in Vienna on 25 January 1905, two new, contrastingly impactful orchestral works were heard for the first time. In his response to Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama on the doomed love between Pelleas and Melisande, Arnold Schoenberg (born 150 years ago) pushes a colossal symphony orchestra to its limits. But Alexander Zemlinsky wasn’t going to let Schoenberg (also his brother-in-law) steal the show, and wore his broken heart on his sleeve in his orchestral response to the well-known Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. Ryan Bancroft marshals his BBC National Orchestra of Wales in two monumental tearjerkers that share far more than a birthday.

Presented by Penny Gore, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London