BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Aldeburgh Festival 2025

The BBC SO conducted by Sakari Oramo premieres Brian Elias's Horn Concerto with Ben Goldscheider. Plus Sibelius's Symphony No.5 and Britten's Our Hunting Fathers with Allan Clayton.

In the second of two concerts from Snape Maltings Concert Hall by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo, a brand new horn concerto by Brian Elias is unveiled. Elias is a composer whose music brims with startling sounds and theatrical contrasts, and his concerto is interpreted here by soloist Ben Goldscheider.

For Aldeburgh Festival featured artist, tenor Allan Clayton, Our Hunting Fathers is “incredible, daring and experimental in a way that is quite unusual in Britten’s music”. Composed as the storm clouds gathered in the late 1930s, and including texts by WH Auden and Thomas Ravenscroft, it challenges the cruelty of man to man, and man to animal.

Sibelius's Symphony No.5 is the concert's final piece. With its Flights of Swans and an inescapable drive to the end, this is a symphony that the BBC SO and Finnish Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo have performed to huge acclaim. And to begin, Aldeburgh Festival featured composer Helen Grime’s dreamy Night Songs – inspired by the “melancholy yet fantastical” quality of visual artist and film-maker Joseph Cornell’s self-contained miniature worlds.

Recorded at Snape Maltings on Sunday 22nd June. Presented by Martin Handley.

Helen Grime: Night Songs
Britten: Our Hunting Fathers
Interval - Music chosen by Brian Elias
Brian Elias: Horn Concerto (Britten Pears Arts commission/ world premiere)
Sibelius: Symphony No.5 in E flat, Op.82

Allan Clayton (tenor)
Ben Goldscheider (horn)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

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