Elgar wouldn’t say if his First Symphony told a story – merely that “it expressed a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future”. But the British public knew a masterpiece when they heard one, and when it was premiered in 1908, the audience leapt to its feet and cheered. Thomas Dausgaard brings a uniquely fresh approach to a late-Romantic epic like no other, paired here today with Bartók’s vivid musical postcards from Transylvania, and the poetry, tenderness and heart-on-sleeve romance of the Piano Concerto by Robert Schumann. There’s a good reason why pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja is revered by her fellow musicians: and you’re about to hear it.

The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

“Life-assertion” was how Béla Bartók described the dazzling finish of his ‘Concerto for Orchestra’ – even though he might already have known that he wouldn’t live to complete it. Yes: it’s one of the 20th century’s most brilliant orchestral showpieces, drenched in the rhythms and colours of Bartók’s native Hungary. It’s also a stirring testimony to the human spirit, every bit as passionate – and as moving – as Brahms’s mighty First Piano Concerto. This is Brahms without the famous beard, the heartfelt music of a young genius who’d known personal tragedy and impossible love. And few living pianists can approach the great Elisabeth Leonskaja for power, poetry or simple humanity.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room
Thomas Dausgaard looks back at the BBC SSO’s 2018/19 Season and introduces the final concert (free to ticket-holders, subject to seating availability).

The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.