BBC SSO 2015-16 Season Runnicles Conducts the ‘Pastoral’ Symphony

James MacMillan dedicated his Violin Concerto to the memory of his mother. But as last season’s acclaimed BBC SSO cycle of MacMillan’s piano concertos showed, there’s more to anything by MacMillan than meets the ear: as one critic put it, this is a work “so full of ideas that you might wonder if he couldn’t have written two concertos”. In the hands of its dedicatee, the great Vadim Repin, it’s an arresting companion-piece for Beethoven’s much-loved (and deceptively relaxed) ‘Pastoral’ symphony, and the quiet revolution of Debussy’s sensuous Prélude; works chosen by Donald Runnicles both to complement, and to strike sparks off, each other.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room
Vadim Repin discusses his career and talks about
James MacMillan’s Violin Concerto.

Post-concert Coda
(approximately 10 minutes after the main concert)
Donald Runnicles and Vadim Repin in recital, including Fritz Kreisler’s Tambourin Chinois.