BBC Symphony Orchestra/Finley

Barbican Hall, London
Barbican, Silk Street, London EC2
United Kingdom
020 7638 8891
http://www.barbican.org.uk/eticketing

BBC Symphony Orchestra
Santtu-Matias Rouvali conductor
Gerald Finley baritone

Two Russian blockbusters frame the UK premiere of True Fire: a new commission specially written for Barbican featured artist Gerald Finley.

Prokofiev said that his Fifth Symphony depicted ‘the greatness of the human spirit’. It’s a gripping climax to a concert that begins with Tchaikovsky’s star-crossed romance, and features Kaija Saariaho’s ravishing True Fire, performed by its dedicatee.

Saariaho’s music combines intense emotion with a shimmering, visionary sonic beauty, and this setting of poetry by Emerson and Seamus Heaney was created with the intelligence and burnished tone of Finley’s singing very much in mind. The results are both surprising, and exquisitely lovely: ’This is a profound, important work‘, declared the LA Times at last year’s world premiere.


Pyotr Tchaikovsky : Overture to Romeo & Juliet
Kaija Saariaho : True Fire
Sergei Prokofiev : Symphony No 5