Tchaikovsky, Britten and Nicholson

BBC Symphony Orchestra/Gernon

,Barbican Hall
A headshot of Ben Gernon

A London premiere by the Scot Alasdair Nicolson sits between Britten's defiant, pacifist Sinfonia da Requiem and Tchaikovsky's wintry First Symphony.

The BBC SO premiered Alasdair Nicolson’s atmospheric song-cycle – ’character studies of ghostly apparitions’ – at the St Magnus International Festival in Orkney where he is Artistic Director. They now bring it to London alongside Britten’s fiercely defiant and pacifist Sinfonia da Requiem, written during the Second World War. The programme ends with Tchaikovsky’s atmospheric and all-too-seldom heard First Symphony with its wintry evocations. It was piece he laboured hard to write, and is, perhaps, his first major work. Ben Gernon, an alumnus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and winner of the 2013 Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, makes his Barbican debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Classical music BBC Symphony Orchestra 2017–18 BBC Symphony Orchestra 2017–18 Multibuy

Programme

Britten Sinfonia da Requiem
Alasdair Nicolson Shadows on the Wall – Five Hauntings (London Premiere)
Tchaikovsky Symphony No 1, Winter Daydreams

Performers

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Ben Gernon conductor
Marta Fontanals-Simmons* mezzo-soprano

*Mezzo-soprano Anna Stéphany is no longer able to perform and we are grateful to Marta Fontanals-Simmons, who has agreed to perform in her place.

Barbican Hall

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