Haydn and Strauss: Nelson Mass and A Hero's Life

No prizes for guessing the real hero of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben. With its swashbuckling self-confidence, self-mocking humour and a positively steamy love scene, this 'Hero’s Life' is very much the world according to R Strauss – an exuberant, off-the-scale showpiece for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Hannu Lintu, making a much-anticipated return. 

And that’s not even the half of it: Lintu opens the concert with a vision of paradise, originally created for the Vienna Philharmonic by the brilliant young Canadian composer Samy Moussa. Then it’s the turn of the BBC Symphony Chorus and a starry line up of solo singers in Haydn’s Nelson Mass: sacred music written in a time of war, with all the power and drama of a great opera. An electrifying centrepiece to a concert that’s larger than life.