BBC Symphony Orchestra

Mahler’s compelling and exhilarating tussle with fate opens the orchestra’s ninetieth anniversary season under Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo.

Join us as we celebrate ninety years of the BBC’s flagship orchestra with music that dazzles, frolics and marks its pivotal role in broadcasting and music history. 

Fifty years since his first concert with the BBC SO, former Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis conducts Mahler’s journey to catharsis after James Ehnes plays Berg’s touching violin concerto. 

Ryan Wigglesworth conducts his own symphonic shortcut through the culmination to Wagner’s Ring and Schoenberg’s seminal monodrama Erwartung.

Dalia Stasevska conducts the BBC SO season finale with Kodály’s intense and outspoken Psalmus Hungaricus for choir and orchestra.

This concert displays both beauty and novelty as new choral music from America meets a classic by Samuel Barber, all conducted by rising star Owain Park.

Singers and dancers unite for choreographed performances of spirited and spiritual choral works culminating in Brahms’s consoling A German Requiem.

An intimate stop on the BBC SO’s journey through everything Tanglewood, featuring string quartets by American pioneers and Augusta Read Thomas’s percussive celebration of the Center’s spirit.

Outlandish musicianship and high jinks from the internet sensations who are transforming the classical repertoire, one deep breath at a time. 

Orchestra and chorus are united for Brahms at his most hushed and Strauss at his most extravagant as Nathalie Stutzmann makes her BBC Symphony Orchestra conducting debut.

From the foreboding to the consoling, music shaped by the culmination of World War II including the UK premiere of Dai Fujikura’s concerto after Hiroshima.

Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s love-fuelled Ninth Symphony – the most profound and contradictory symphony he would write.

Sakari Oramo conducts Sibelius’s boldest and most revealing symphony alongside his charming Humoresques, beginning with a masterpiece of orchestral virtuosity from Britain.

Programme to be announced.

The culmination of the BBC SO’s immersive celebration of Tanglewood, the home of contemporary orchestral music in America, includes the world premiere of Bernard Rands’s Symphonic Fantasy.

BBC Symphony Orchestra explore the works of composers who have been inspired by dance, from Prokofiev’s riotous ballet symphony to Poulenc’s toe-tapping concerto shaped by jazz.

Schumann’s symphonic love letter to his beloved wife meets Magnus Lindberg’s powerful protest against totalitarianism.

Mesmeric ballet music commissioned by the extraordinary Ida Rubinstein meets an exquisite piano concerto with a special place in BBC Symphony Orchestra history.

Sakari Oramo conducts the full choral-orchestral version of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, one of the most overwhelmingly beautiful ballet score ever written.

Gemma New and the BBC SO explore the music of American composers and their students in this concert of groovy, glitzy and gregarious scores, from Copland and Bernstein to Adams and Kernis.