🔥 BREAKING: E4384f - Live Updates February 2026

7 Dec 2018, Barbican, London

19:30 Fri 7 Dec 2018 Next Event

Rafael Payare conducts Shostakovich Symphony No 5

19:30 Fri 7 Dec 2018 Barbican, London

Love and death collide with wit and irreverence in a programme of contemporary classics, which has one of the century’s most powerful symphonies at its heart.

Performances & Interviews

00:59

BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican: Classical for Starters

Hear some of the most-loved music from the classical repertoire. Come to a concert.

Oct '18BBC

Programme

- - Richard Strauss
  - Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks
- - Alban Berg
  - Seven Early Songs
- - Dmitry Shostakovich
  - Symphony No. 5 in D minor

Performers

Rafael Payare
conductor
conductor
Dorothea Röschmann
soprano
soprano
BBC Symphony Orchestra

Composers

About This Event

Beauty, eroticism and tenderness all jostle for supremacy in Berg’s exquisite Seven Early Songs, performed here by the distinguished German soprano Dorothea Roschmann, who makes her much-anticipated debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Strauss’s musical portrait of the mischievous folk-hero Till Eulenspiegel makes a lively opener, while Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony – a bold, bitter work of musical protest – reveals the darker side of the age. Dynamic young conductor Rafael Payare, one of the fastest rising stars of the orchestral world, directs.