All about the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Chorus

My name is Paul Hughes and I’m General Manager of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers. It’s a busy job, and I’m often asked about what my role involves, how we approach programming for the groups and what a typical day might be, something I hope to shed some light on in this post. I’ll be focusing here on the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and will be writing about the work of the BBC Singers in a separate post coming soon.

First, the briefest of potted histories. The BBC Symphony Orchestra was created in 1930 by the Corporation that was, itself, only 8 years old. Its first Chief Conductor was Adrian Boult who remained at the helm for 30 years, and the orchestra quickly became the house orchestra for the Promenade Concerts, working with Sir Henry Wood in those early years and performing concerts mostly in the Queens Hall. The orchestra existed then, as now, to present the widest range of repertoire, including the neglected, the new and the commissioned at the highest quality for the widest range of audience. Skip forward 85 years and the orchestra is in excellent artistic health under the baton of the Finn Sakari Oramo, Chief Conductor since July 2013.

The BBC Symphony Chorus has a longer pedigree having started life in 1928 as the National Chorus, becoming the BBC Chorus in 1932, the BBC Choral Society in 1935 and finally achieving its present name in 1977. Sir Andrew Davis is the honorary President of the Chorus and its director since 1989 is Stephen Jackson.

A few weeks ago the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed a concert including Nielsen’s fourth symphony conducted by Sakari Oramo. It was a concert which brought me great joy, seeing the orchestra walking off stage and out of the concert hall, all wide smiles, and completely lifted up by a concert we all knew had been incredibly special.

It was a brilliantly programmed concert planned by chief conductor Sakari Oramo, where each piece had some connection with the other, taking us on an extraordinary journey of discovery. As a very proud General Manager I get a huge buzz when I see the chemistry between the players and the conductor working so well to create a single artistic vision. At times like that you just know you are going to be in for something special and with the audience on their feet shouting at the end I couldn’t have wished for a better end to a concert.

I lead the planning operation that will involve our Planning Manager, colleagues from BBC Radio 3, from our marketing, operations and learning teams and, of course, our Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo. The process isn’t particularly scientific and most of the time, we might start with some germ of an idea that has emerged in conversation, or we might start with a blank sheet of paper and ask Sakari ‘what would you like to do?’ This helps me get a sense of the areas he wants to explore: whether it’s the highways and byways of British music, his commitment to contemporary music, his wish to explore with us the great core repertoire - whatever it might be, Sakari’s enthusiasm is crucial, highly persuasive and very infectious! He’s one of those conductors who spends time trawling the internet to discover all kinds of music and artists, and although we may not do all the pieces that he shares enthusiastically with me, the process gives me a sense of what his aesthetic is, what he likes and what he doesn’t like. Sakari responds very promptly to my communications when he’s not here in London which makes it a very live and lively relationship.

As manager of the orchestra I want to create a season around what Sakari does, with him leading the artistic programme. So, this year, alongside our operas and Total Immersion Days, our biggest project by far has been the Nielsen symphony cycle. It's built a significant audience and a lot of interest in the classical music press. That’s been tremendously good for us to learn as a model for how we programme seasons in the future – starting with Sakari's programming and then wrapping big musical statements around that helps us create this fantastic season-long offering.

And that’s reflected in this year’s season, starting with Unsuk Chin’s opera Alice in Wonderland this weekend. We’ve programmed quite a lot of Unsuk Chin’s music over the years - I think she’s a fantastic composer – and very early on when I went to see the world premiere of this piece, I knew that there were no plans to stage it in this country. So, I put a marker down with the publishers quite quickly to say we’d like to work on that. Later, the Los Angeles Philharmonic came on-board as co-producers, with the Barbican and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Next, the wonderful director Netia Jones (Where the Wild Things Are, Higglety Pigglety Pop at Aldeburgh and the Barbican) came on board and presented us with a vision for the entire work that combined costume and sets and vibrant video projections. As always with these sort of projects, there’s a lot of work that goes into the production, but the end result is going to be truly remarkable. It will be recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday 11 July at 7:30pm.

After Alice, there are more distinctive events programmed. The film of Des Knaben Wunderhorn is going to be a very significant event for us. We have co-produced a film directed by Clara Pons, and we’re working with baritone Dietrich Henschel who will sing the 90-minute song cycle (including the UK premiere of arrangements by Detlev Glanert) accompanying the images of this exquisite, challenging and, at times very, very dark film.

And after that, I’m looking forward to Daliborby Smetana - which sees us work with Jiří Bělohlávek, our Conductor Laureate with whom we won a Royal Philharmonic Society award for Martinů’s opera Juliette. Smetana’s Dalibor is seldom performed, and we’ve got a great cast, so I think it’s going to be one of the high points for us.

For me, the journey the BBC Symphony Orchestra has been on over the past few years has been about trying to push the boundaries of what a symphony orchestra is, and what a broadcasting orchestra is perceived to be. Engaging with other art forms and other collaborators can help us achieve that , whether it is with drama and actors, or visual arts, or film – the challenge is how to reflect these wonderful live events on air for our broadcast audience.

The BBC Symphony Chorus are always preparing for a varied diet of repertoire and events that include the first and last night of the Proms, their own a capella concerts coming up, and music from Rachmaninov to Bliss, Eric Whitacre to Carl Orff, Walton to Hugh Wood. The commitment they all make to the Chorus and, therefore, to the BBC and the results which the chorus achieve at the highest artistic level, never fails to amaze me. Coming from a choral background as a young man, this aspect of our programming is always one I look forward to.

Members of the Symphony Chorus make an extraordinary commitment to us. Many of them have been members for years and they come from far and wide. The level at which the chorus operates is quite breathtaking – for example they recently performed Brett Dean’s Last Days of Socrates – a major new choral work that lasts 25 minutes - and it was truly phenomenal. Since its formation in 1928, the Chorus has premiered all kinds of work in this country. They're not like any other chorus and we are proud of them.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, alongside all the other BBC Performing Groups, are committed to innovative education work, and I'm really proud of what we achieve in that area. The pan-BBC classical music initiative Ten Pieces has been a real blast. The DVD of the film alone has been distributed to 10,000 primary schools - almost 50% of the primary schools in this country, that have all applied for a copy so they can take part in this fantastic project. It's helped to create a massive uplift of interest in classical music, which is a real achievement.

Members of the Orchestra have recently travelled to schools in Liverpool and Portsmouth for Ten Pieces take over days and later in the year the whole Orchestra will be performing the full Ten Pieces in three concerts in the Backstage Centre in Thurrock, and for 4,000 school children in the brand new Derby Arena, which houses a state-of-the-art velodrome. We have a number of keen cyclists in the orchestra and they will no doubt be tempted to get on the track in between sessions (risk assessments and insurance will be their safety net!!) It's great to see our family events attracting multi-generations of people wanting to come and play with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

And of course almost everything the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus do is broadcast on BBC Radio 3, meaning that audiences everywhere can hear our concerts, even if they can't make it to the concert hall. I do hope you enjoy hearing our music as much as we enjoy making it.



Paul Hughes is General Manager, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers