Organization

Admin

Conductor

Sakari Oramo

Assistant Conductor

Neil Ferris

Singer

Robin Tritschler

Tenor

Ailish Tynan

Soloist

Benson Wilson

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Orchestra

Others

BBC Symphony Chorus

Finchley Children’s Music Group

Christmas Tales

London

United Kingdom

Barbican Centre

Barbican Concert Hall

Christmas Tales: Rakastava Op. 14 Sibelius (+2 More)

Private

Public

Rakastava Op. 14

In terra pax

Saint Nicolas, Op. 42

Approved

Celebration and contemplation as the BBC Symphony Chorus performs music inspired by frozen landscapes and Christmas heroes.

Before the red-cloaked, bushy-bearded St Nicholas squeezes himself down your chimney, discover the legends behind the 3rd-century bishop who would go on to inspire the Santa Claus myth. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus reunite for Benjamin Britten’s captivating cantata, recounting Nicholas’s life from birth to death.

As a child one Christmas Eve, Gerald Finzi climbed a local hill and heard the church bells ring out over his beloved Gloucestershire. This inspired his Christmas Scene, imagining Christ’s nativity in an idyllically frozen, picture-postcard English countryside setting. It is performed here in its 1956 chamber orchestra arrangement. From frozen Finland, Jean Sibelius’s Rakastava (The Lover) opens this wintry concert, based on folk stories from Karelia – borderlands between modern Russia and Finland.

English

Christmas Tales by Sibelius, Finzi, Gerald, Britten, From (2021/2021), Conductor Sakari Oramo, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues