BBC Symphony Orchestra - Tchaikovsky, Saariaho, Prokofiev

Live from the Barbican the BBC Symphony Orchestra with conductor Sakari Oramo in Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev. Baritone Gerald Finley joins for Kaija Saariaho's True Fire.

Presented by Martin Handley

Tchaikovsky: Fantasy Overture 'Romeo and Juliet'
Kaija Saariaho: True Fire
BBC co-commission; UK premiere

8.25: Interval

8.45: Prokofiev: Symphony No 5 in B flat major

Gerald Finley, baritone
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo, conductor

Sakari Oramo directs the BBC Symphony Orchestra in two Russian masterworks, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture, and Prokofiev's Symphony No 5. Prokofiev said that his Fifth Symphony depicted 'the greatness of the human spirit'. It's a gripping climax to a concert that begins with Tchaikovsky's star-crossed romance, and features Kaija Saariaho's ravishing True Fire, performed by its dedicatee, Gerald Finley.
Saariaho's music combines intense emotion with a shimmering, visionary sonic beauty, and this setting of poetry by Emerson and Seamus Heaney was created with the intelligence and burnished tone of Finley's singing very much in mind. The results are both surprising, and exquisitely lovely: 'This is a profound, important work', declared the LA Times at last year's world premiere.