A New Dawn – Oramo conducts Brahms by Jolas, Gipps, Brahms, Ds. 02 Oct. 2021, De (2021/2021), Director musical Sakari Oramo, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom

After 19 life-changing months, the BBC Symphony Orchestra open a new chapter. Join us in the Hall or online for music infused with the miracle of life, joy of existence and shadows of mourning. At the heart of this evening with BBC SO's Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo is Johannes Brahms’s symphony of light and shadows – music that tells of the magnificence of creation but with a ribbon of mourning tied around its sleeve. Brahms’s Symphony No 2 resembles the most beautiful of sunsets followed by the most invigorating of new dawns. In 1968, the composer Ruth Gipps wrote a concerto for a newly qualified young horn player embarking on a career. That horn player happened to be her son. His mother’s gift is an ethereal, poetic and virtuosic piece, played here in the centenary of the composer’s birth by former BBC Young Musician finalist Ben Goldscheider. To open, Oramo conducts the UK premiere of Betsy Jolas’s ‘meticulously charming’ (The Boston Globe) homage to Bach’s hometown, Leipzig.