Review: BBC Proms Concludes Season with Strauss's 'Four Last Songs' at Royal Albert Hall

“It is difficult composing endings. Beethoven and Wagner could do it. Only great composers can do it. I can do it too.” It wasn’t just Richard Strauss’s death-embracing 'Four Last Songs' which fit this theme in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s final Prom of the season, as Franz Schubert’s 8th symphony remained unfinished at his death - and Schubert’s setting of a morbid Goethe poem inspired Hans Werner Henze’s “Erlkönig”. The Benjamin Britten arrangement of the third movement of Gustav Mahler’s 3rd symphony (What the Wild Flowers Tell Me) does not immediately strike you as being consumed with mortality, but if you listen carefully you might find themes which go beyond the superficially pastoral. Quite a programme for this orchestra to go out on.

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Review-BBC-PROMS-STRAUSSS-FOUR-LAST-SONGS-Royal-Albert-Hall-20260912)._