Prom 40: Vasily Petrenko conducts Copland, George Walker and Prokofiev

Moscow, 1945: when Sergey Prokofiev stepped up to conduct the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, he was interrupted by the sound of an artillery barrage. Forged in a time of war and tyranny, Prokofiev said that the symphony embodied ‘the greatness of the human spirit’, and for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s Music Director, Vasily Petrenko, it’s one of the supreme 20th-century masterpieces. Tonight, he sets it in a strikingly original context – alongside the primary colours and all-American optimism of Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and the bold, swinging postwar rhythms of George Walker’s Trombone Concerto. Peter Moore (‘magical’ – The Times) is the soloist in this striking contribution to our season-long focus on instruments that don’t always get their due.