Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem opens a programme of testimony and remembrance. Paul Watkins is the soloist in Lutosławski’s bleak and beautiful Cello Concerto, composed for and dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich in a period of violent protest and political repression in Poland.
Thomas Adès conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and soloists Christianne Stotijn and Simon Keenlyside in the world premiere of his Totentanz, a commission in memory of Lutosławski, which sets an anonymous 15th-century text that accompanied a frieze destroyed when Lübeck’s Marienkirche was bombed in the Second World War.
Watch and listen to more music from Britten from the Proms.
Watch and listen to more Polish music from the Proms.