Hype at the interval, pre-performance chat about the conductor’s kimono, and Wonderwall as encore. The music was almost beside the point.
Programme
Copland Fanfare for the Common Man
Gershwin An American in Paris
Ravel Piano Concerto in G major
Josephine Stephenson new work (BBC commission: world premiere)
Finzi For St Cecilia
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Thomas Atkins (tenor)
BBC Singers · BBC Symphony Chorus · BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Dalia Stasevska
Friday 17 July 2026 · 7pm–c9pm
Royal Albert Hall
Listen on BBC Radio 3 / BBC Sounds · Watch on BBC iPlayer (broadcast live)
Preview
Marking 250 years of American independence, the First Night programme makes a case for a generous, optimistic, breezy kind of America. Copland’s Fanfare, written in 1942 in response to Henry Wallace’s vision of a century belonging to ordinary people, sets the tone.
Gershwin’s An American in Paris follows: urbane, colourful, a European’s dream of American energy filtered through a Broadway sensibility. Then Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G — which sits midway between Debussy and Gershwin in feel, bluesy and iridescent — played by Yunchan Lim, the 2022 Van Cliburn competition winner.
Finzi’s For St Cecilia feels like the odd one out — serviceable, light, pleasant.
The Josephine Stephenson BBC commission will be pitched carefully for a First Night TV audience. Stephenson comes with credentials, but it is the style of the writing that will point to how Radio 3 is pitching contemporary classical music for its preferred target audience.
Review
Musically, the programme looked OK. Copland, Gershwin, Ravel. Emotionally, it left me cold.
Plenty of things to go ooh and aah about on TV and radio. The BBC certainly didn’t miss hyping the start, middle and end of the season before it had even got underway, using the interval to promote the season all over again. Journalist Tina Daheley spoke to BBC Symphony Orchestra Principal Guest conductor Dalia Stasevska about her kimono (because that’s what the audience cares about).
Later, Thomas Atkins used his own pre-performance “interview” for the First Night to promote Nicky Spence’s appearance in the Last Night — Atkins was suitably compliant. If only the actual music hadn’t got in the way of the actual TV broadcast. No context, no history – everything simply amazing. It might have been better if marketing had been denied access to the writers’ room. Fingers crossed for next year.
America, in an American in Paris, is heard as a series of vignettes. Polished. Self-confident. Entertainment, not a musical argument. Expressive moments missed in hurried rubatos. Little heart. Unearned glitz. Gershwin is a functional overture before Ravel’s more gratifyingly narrative-driven concerto. Yunchan Lim is the star billing, but the performance is hard-fought, the tone harsh in a lot of places. There’s a moment in the second movement where Lim might have made the case for live performance. He doesn’t quite take it. Still, the slightly uncomfortable bottom line here is that this feels like something everybody needed, wanted, and resolutely got through but no one especially enjoyed. There are many good recordings to seek out of this work. Seek them out first.
The Finzi landed as predicted. Inoffensive, reasonably interesting. Ultimately inconsequential. This isn’t a work that isn’t played that much because of its scale, simply because its doesn’t especially land. And whilst Wonderwall as an “encore” started off feeling like it was a touching nod to the England football team floored by Argentina in the World Cup, it finished feeling more like a deeply unpleasant moist pat on the back to incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. Tacky. Maybe even desperate.
More on Josephine Stephenson’s premiere shortly.
Gallery
