BBC SSO 2019-20 Season Afternoon Performance: Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet

“There cannot be the slightest doubt that in Alpesh Chauhan, the BBC SSO has a real find on its hands”, wrote ‘The Herald’ when this young British conductor made his BBC SSO debut in 2015, and Chauhan’s imaginatively-conceived programmes and powerful, emotionally charged performances have been among the highlights of recent seasons. In this concert, he places three masterpieces of the 1930s in revelatory counterpoint. The ‘Sinfonia da Requiem’ might just be the rawest music Britten ever wrote; an outpouring of personal grief that somehow grows into a furious warning to a world on the brink of the Second World War. Prokofiev’s ballet ‘Romeo and Juliet’ remakes Shakespeare in the iron and steel of Stalin’s USSR – yet somehow gets closer than any other version to the story’s tender heart. And Stravinsky reinvents Bach for the Art Deco era, in a chamber concerto that positively buzzes with wit.

The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 - presented by Jamie MacDougall.