Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Sibelius’s Second Symphony — with Britten’s Cello Symphony and a UK premiere from Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Programme

Mark-Anthony Turnage Festen Suite (BBC co-commission: UK premiere)
Britten Cello Symphony
Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D major

Guy Johnston (cello)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Sakari Oramo

Tuesday 28 July 2026 · 7pm–c9.20pm
Royal Albert Hall

Listen on BBC Radio 3 / BBC Sounds

Preview

There’s already been lot of buzz around Turnage’s opera Festen which premiered at the Royal Opera House in 2025 and went onto win an Olivier Award later the same year. Turnage’s setting of Lee Hall’s libretto based on a 1998 Danish film called The Celebration results in a dark one-act comic opera that draws on sexual abuse, racism, and suicide set at a 60th birthday meal. What’s on the programme tonight is the suite of music adapted from that opera. 

Britten’s Cello Symphony, premiered in 1964, is a personal work written at the request of the composer’s new Russian friend Mstislav Rostropovich. It’s peak Britten – intimate, expressive, sometimes awkward (to unfamiliar ears) in its musical language, but also uncompromising. The work is a symphony, not a concerto, because Britten saw the cello as working with the orchestra rather than competing with it. It is a work that represents a special friendship, one that plays a crucial role in showing the complexities of Britten and the regard he was held in by other musicians when he was alive. Soloist tonight is Guy Johnston who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2000.

Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 wears its nationalist heart very much on its sleeve, and we love it all the more for it. Sibelius conveys a sometimes overwhelming sense of national pride (especially in the opening section of the final movement) without being sentimental. The second movement tugs insistently at the heartstrings. The opening of the third movement is a test of fingers on fingerboards and bows on strings. The concluding bars of the final movement never quite feels like the closure we’ve all been hoping for but fit the bill nonetheless. There’s only one place to hear this: standing in the middle of the arena, four rows back. This is one of those works that, unusually, works perfectly in the Royal Albert Hall. 

Review

This review will be published following the concert.

Gallery

Photography will be added once available.