2024-25 has been a season to get to know the new Chief Conductor, Mark Wigglesworth. A good start in this was with Walton 1 and Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto (with Nicholas McCarthy) last November. Or Brahms 3 (part of the full set), or Sir Stephen Hough playing his own The World of Yesterday, and the remarkably successful Enigma Variations with narration in February. But there were other delights, too. Unfair to pick a few, I know, but how about Adam Hickox’s Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninov, and Shostakovich 1st Violin Concerto with Rosanne Philippens? And of course, Kirill’s return with Ksenija Sidorova for Fairy Tales for accordion and orchestra by Trojan and (an absolute joy) Fairy Tales by de Hartmann.

It has been a season of enchantments – and no less so on this evening. David Hill let the orchestra rip into Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. The songs are well known, but the way Bernstein knits them together is as exciting and clever as the way the BSO played them. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was perhaps an obvious follow-on but with the absolute star pianist Steven Osborne was never overshadowed. Even oldies like your reporter were swaying along.

After the interval, the Symphony Chorus, prepared by Gavin Carr, took up the challenge of joining the orchestra and excellent baritone soloist Andrew Hamilton in swinging jazz and classical together into Walton’s oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast. It was an absolute ride – a full power performance with extra brass bands, organ and tremendous energy.

So, mixing regret with anticipation, as 2024-25 ends, 2025-26 hoves into sight, bringing tidings of many delights to come. Gather again on 1st October for a return visit by Sir StephEn Hough playing Rachmaninov and Mark Wigglesworth conducting the huge Shostakovich 10th Symphony. Look forward to visits by Jess Gillam (with a BSO-commissioned saxophone concerto by Dani Howard), Paul Lewis, Ning Feng, Boris Giltburg, and Artist in Residence Roderick Williams, together with many others you can find on bsolive.com.

There will be old favourites by Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Mahler and Elgar, but also new things (for me at least) to learn, such as Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony, Respigni’s Church Windows and Lili Boulanger’s D’un Matin de Printemps.

And in the meantime, the players will be as busy as ever at Grange Opera, the BBC Proms, many tours to venues large and small in the South and West, as well as the famous open air spectaculars. It is not going to be all buckets and spades, ice creams and bodyboards!

This Orchestra, its conductors and friends, maintain a stratospherically high standard of repertoire and performance. We are amazingly lucky to have it.

BSO member and proud supporter Tom Wickson 

For full details of our 2025/26 season see here

We also received reviews from: 

Opera Today “Velvet strings and a rapt solo viola added to the dream-like quality of ‘Somewhere’, while a breezy ‘Scherzo’ was savagely cut short by the testosterone-fuelled ‘Mambo’, the players revelling in the score’s Big Band sonorities, trumpets scorching the air.”

Seen and Heard International “The orchestra was on superb, swaggering form: they reminded me of Berlioz’s description of his own Te Deum – ‘Babylonian, Ninevite’. The full complement of extra brass was present – making a total of ten trumpets, nine trombones and three tubas – and their positions at the extreme edge of either side of the platform made for some thrilling antiphonal effects, especially as they stood to play.”