Sakari Oramo conducts music by his fellow countryman Jean Sibelius, launching a Sibelius theme for this season’s Barbican concerts, which includes the complete Sibelius Symphonies. The exhilarating Fifth Symphony, which culminates in the evocation of swans in flight, starts this magnificent journey.
The young Richard Strauss imagines the end of a man’s journey through life as his strength ebbs away and his mind reviews his achievements in Death and Transfiguration. Following this, Russian violinist Alina Pogotskina performs Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto - an intense and beautifully sensitive hymn devoted to Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma (née Mahler) and Walter Gropius, who died aged 18.