Prom 27: BBC Symphony Orchestra August 6, 2008

A former pupil of Messiaen, Benjamin opens with L'Ascension, a sequence of meditations on religious themes. Carolin Widmann makes her Proms debut in Stravinsky's coolly neo-Classical concerto. Benjamin's own Ringed by the Flat Horizon, premiered while its composer was still a student at Cambridge, is dedicated to Messiaen and vividly depicts a storm brewing over a desolate New Mexico desert.

The concert ends, as it began, in France, with one of Ravel's most limpid scores and one of his most popular.

* Messiaen L'Ascension (25 mins)
* Stravinsky Violin Concerto (22 mins)
* Interval
* George Benjamin Ringed by the Flat Horizon (20 mins)
* Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte (7 mins)
* Ravel Boléro (15 mins)

Carolin Widmann violin
BBC Symphony Orchestra
George Benjamin conductor

Official Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2008/whatson/0608.shtml#prom27