11 Apr 2025, Barbican, London
BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus 2024-25 Barbican Season Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams
Oramo conducts Vaughan Williams
England’s dreaming: Sakari Oramo rediscovers rare and wonderful British masterpieces by Vaughan Williams, Doreen Carwithen and Malcolm Arnold.
England’s dreaming: Sakari Oramo rediscovers rare and wonderful British masterpieces by Vaughan Williams, Doreen Carwithen and Malcolm Arnold.
About This Event
Malcolm Arnold never did anything by halves, and when he composed his Fifth Symphony he poured out his soul. Soaring melodies, gleaming colours and raw, heart-on-sleeve emotion: this is British music as you’ve never heard it before. It’s a gripping counterpart to Doreen Carwithen’s Concerto, and the radiance and rapture of Vaughan Williams’s gorgeous Serenade.
For BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oramo, British music is a ion – especially the masterpieces that the British themselves have overlooked. The Serenade to Music is a perennial favourite, but today the BBC Singers revive the composer’s ravishing original version. And pianist Alexandra Dariescu is just as committed to the music of Doreen Carwithen – like Arnold, a postwar composer whose music is richly melodic, atmospheric, and evocative.