The Latest Breaking News from BBC Symphony Orchestra

BBC Symphony Orchestra/ Oramo/ Son review – rainy days, rolling hills and enchanted creatures

Judith Weir’s salute to the Indian monsoon kicked off a concert on nature and folk themes, Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son brought poetic flourishes to works by Bartók and Finzi, while the magical Firebird made a rousing finale

The Guardian - UK · Mar 15

BBCSO/Schuldt review – Phibbs cello concerto brings cohesion to uneven programme

Clemens Schuldt kept the volume high in an inconsistent evening in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra ranged across Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet, Mel Bonis’s Ophélie and a suite from Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier

The Guardian - UK · Jan 19

BBCSO/Elder review – like a Klimt painting in sound

The final concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s season brought us Franz Schreker’s sensual and elusive Chamber Symphony and Mahler’s intense Das Lied von der Erde

The Guardian - UK · May 25, 2025

There is no one with power to fight for classical music at the BBC now. It’s as if Herod runs the creche

Savage cuts suggest a cadre of bosses has forgotten what public service broadcasting is, says Paul Hughes, former director of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers

The Guardian - UK · Mar 14, 2023

BBCSO/Watts/Wigglesworth review – a striking song cycle that finds divine in the everyday

Elizabeth Watts’s buoyant soprano drew us in to this poignant performance of Ryan Wigglesworth’s work Till Dawning, based on the poetry of George Herbert

The Guardian - UK · Jan 22, 2023

BBCSO/Karabits review – Ukraine speaks out through its music

The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s guest conductor Kirill Karabits and pianist Anna Fedorova brought music from their homeland to an enthusiastic audience

The Guardian - UK · Jan 16, 2023

Total Immersion: Sibelius the Storyteller review – hair-raising climaxes and soaring operatic intensity

A day of concerts led by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra explored the Finnish composer’s tone poems and songs, and made for a vivid - and special - experience

The Guardian - UK · Oct 10, 2022

Prom 66: BBCSO/Canellakis review – Jolas puts her tongue in her cheek

Betsy Jolas’s bTunes is a witty ode to our attention-sapping times, while Karina Canellakis commanded Mahler’s First Symphony with an expressive and sharply etched performance

The Guardian - UK · Sep 6, 2022

Anti-empire, anti-fascist, pro-suffragist: the stunning secret life of Proms staple Jerusalem

Why is Jerusalem lumped in with the jingoism of Last Night of the Proms? William Blake wrote a heretical, anti-establishment anthem that was later gifted to the suffragists and used to rouse fighters in the Spanish civil war

The Guardian - UK · Sep 5, 2022

Prom 44: BBCSO/Oramo review – Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D played with gravitas and grandeur

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus brought dynamic shading to Smyth’s at times forbidding work, and conjured sensuous beauty from Debussy’s Nocturnes

The Guardian - UK · Aug 21, 2022