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The ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Ryan Wigglesworth perform Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 and Birtwistle's Earth Dances.

Presented by Andrew McGregor, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Birtwistle: Earth Dances

c.8.10pm
Interval: Helen Gordon, author of Notes From Deep Time, describes her researches into the earth's crust and the layers which have inspired the Harrison Birtwistle composition. She describes visiting 3 billion year old rocks in Scotland, volcanoes in Naples and earthquake monitoring in California.

c.8.30pm
Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, ‘Eroica’

Harrison Birtwistle’s monumental Earth Dances returns to the Proms for the first time this century. This contemporary orchestral masterpiece boasts tectonic shifts that surge and fissure with inexorable, elemental force. Ryan Wigglesworth and the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Scottish Symphony Orchestra pair it with the mould-breaking orchestral pinnacle of another age. Grander than anything that came before, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, the ‘Eroica’, ushers in Romanticism, revolutionising both the form itself and expectations of what a symphony can – and should – be.