BBC Philharmonic 2025-26 Season Big Beautiful Dark and Scary - BBC Philharmonic Orchestra - BBC

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25 Apr 2026, The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

19:30 Sat 25 Apr 2026 Next Event

BBC Philharmonic

Big Beautiful Dark and Scary

19:30 Sat 25 Apr 2026 The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

Tickets for this Event

Programme

- - Julia Wolfe
  - Big Beautiful Dark and Scary
- - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
  - Violin Concerto
- - Hector Berlioz
  - Symphonie fantastique

Performers

BBC Philharmonic
Anja Bihlmaier
conductor
conductor
Bomsori Kim
violin
violin

Composers

Out of near-death experiences -- life

‘This is how life feels right now.’
– Julia Wolfe

Wolfe was two blocks from the Twin Towers when the planes hit on September 11, 2001. Big Beautiful Dark and Scary is the sound of that aftermath: an ominous, awesome wall of sound. When he wrote his Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky was also recuperating from personal turmoil: after a collapsed marriage and a failed suicide attempt, he escaped to the shores of Lake Geneva. In the company of a violinist muse – Josef Kotek – Tchaikovsky created a concerto of romance, peace and jollity, and a celebrated classic of the repertoire.

Personal suffering is distant in Tchaikovsky’s concerto, but front-and-centre of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Originally titled ‘Episodes in the Life of an Artist’, this “fantastic symphony in five parts” follows the tribulations of a gifted artist who, out of an unrequited love for a woman, falls into a deep malaise, and travels through opium-addled hallucinations. High drama.

Part of

BBC Philharmonic 2025-26 Season

Discover the Music

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique

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