Winner of 2021’s BBC Cardiff Singer of the World, and a singer who ‘brings an iridescent glow to Strauss’ (Opera Today), Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha joins the orchestra for some of the German composer’s most poised and beautiful orchestral songs in advance of a major recording with the orchestra. These songs seem to carry whole worlds of emotion and experience, their pure beauty tinged with a deeply moving melancholy.

Either side of Strauss’s songs, Sir Mark Elder unleashes the orchestra’s full firepower. Few pieces of music burst into life quite like Strauss’s rollercoaster portrayal of the womanizing nomad Don Juan - his swaggering antics careering through the orchestra with pulsating energy before a final burn-out. Then comes the spiritual grandeur of Wagner, whose music Sir Mark has performed and recorded to international acclaim. Wagner’s music for his mythical opera Lohengrin glows with an other-worldly light, while his comedy Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg could hardly be more different - bubbling along with glee, wit and brilliance.