BBC SSO: Glasgow Autumn Season 2021

Autumn Feel the Music City Halls, Glasgow 2021 bbc.co.uk/ bbcsso

Welcome Back to Live Music at City Halls It’s with great excitement that I’d like to welcome you to the BBC SSO 2021 Autumn Season.

Until things settle down, we’ve decided to announce concerts up to December only, but I’m confident you’ll find plenty to look forward to in the coming months: be it our Opening Concert featuring Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony, showcase concerts for the outstanding talents of François Leleux and Jörg Widmann, or our irresistible Tchaikovsky double bill.

If anything has become clear over the past months, it’s that our players need and want an audience more than ever. And from the messages of support we’ve received from audiences, it seems like the feeling is mutual.

Of course, if you’re not yet ready to return to the concert hall, you don’t have to miss a note.

This season’s concerts will be broadcast on Radio 3 and BBC Sounds, many of them live, and some will also be available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

But I hope you can join us in person at City Halls where you will not only hear the music created by our wonderful musicians, but feel it as well.

Dominic Parker Director, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Book with Confidence We recognise that some people might be nervous about returning to the City Halls so we are putting a number of measures in place to reassure audiences and help minimise infection.

Seating for all our concerts this autumn will be partially-distanced. This means you won’t have other patrons sitting beside you or directly in front or directly behind you.

As a result, the capacity of the hall is also reduced and some seats or areas will be unavailable. Seating is arranged in pairs and single seats only.

To minimise risk of infection we’re working with the venue to ensure that enhanced cleaning, directional signage and hand sanitiser stations remain in place.

Unless you have an exemption, you will be required to wear a face mask for the duration of your visit.

If you find yourself unable to attend the concert you’ve booked we will happily swap your ticket for another BBC SSO event. In the event that a concert is cancelled you will receive a full refund.

We will continue to review these safety measures throughout the coming months.

Please check our website before your visit in case guidance has changed, or if new entry requirements have been introduced. bbc.co.uk/bbcsso

Thursday 23.09.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Opening Night Sibelius 7 JS Bach

Es ist genug (Chorale from Cantata BWV 60) (c.2 mins)

Welcome back to live concerts at City Halls. For our first public Glasgow concert in 18 months the BBC SSO plays, well, what else but Sibelius?

Magnus Lindberg Chorale (c.6 mins) Violin Concerto No.1 (c.27 mins)

His extraordinary one-movement Seventh Symphony is the climax of an evening that pairs the composer with fellow Finns: violin maverick Pekka Kuusisto and composer Magnus Lindberg. Expect sparks to fly in Lindberg’s First Violin Concerto, while his Chorale is preceded by part of the work that inspired it, Bach’s Es ist genug. Plus, conductor Joana Carneiro finds room for Beethoven’s stirring Leonore No.3 Overture, a passionate hymn to liberty that never seems to lose its relevance.

Beethoven Overture: Leonore No.3 (c.14 mins) Sibelius Symphony No.7 (c.24 mins) Pekka Kuusisto violin Joana Carneiro conductor

Photo/Pekka Kuusisto by Felix Broede

Photo/Joana Carneiro by Dave Weiland

Thursday 30.09.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Mendelssohn and Mozart with François Leleux Mendelssohn Overture: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c.12 mins)

There’s a chill in the air and the nights are drawing in, but here’s a concert from superstar oboist François Leleux that simply bursts with sunshine.

Mozart (arr. Leleux) Arias from The Magic Flute & Don Giovanni for oboe and orchestra

Mendelssohn’s depiction of Shakespearian shenanigans glows in the light of a balmy summer evening, while his sun-dappled ‘Italian’ Symphony is as ripe and zesty as a freshly-plucked lemon. Louise Farrenc’s first Overture bounds along with energy and invention; and Leleux plays for us, too, in his own arrangements of arias from two of Mozart’s most celebrated operas.

An evening of feel-good favourites so dazzling that you might need a pair of sunglasses.

(c.20 mins)

Farrenc Overture No.1 (c.7 mins) Mendelssohn Symphony No.4 ‘Italian’ (c.30 mins) François Leleux oboe/director

Photo/François Leleux by Jean-Baptiste Millot

Thursday 28.10.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Spotlight On Jörg Widmann Weber Clarinet Concerto No.1 (c.20 mins)

Jörg Widmann Con brio – chamber orchestra version (c.12 mins) Schumann Symphony No.2 (c.40 mins) Jörg Widmann clarinet/director

Certain musicians seem to make everything they touch buzz with electricity – and few do so with more verve, humour or flair than Jörg Widmann: composer, conductor and clarinettist extraordinaire.

“Any Widmann performance brings whatever he plays kicking and screaming into the present day” says The Guardian, so expect to hear Schumann’s familiar Second Symphony with new ears. You’ll be wowed, too, at the brilliance of his musical calling card Con brio (which breaks Beethoven into tiny pieces before putting him back together) and the beauty of his playing in Weber’s famous clarinet concerto.

Photo/Jörg Widmann by Marco Borggreve

Thursday 11.11.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (c.12 mins) Yasushi Akutagawa Triptyque for string Orchestra (c.14 mins)

Beethoven Symphony No.6 ‘Pastoral’ (c.39 mins)

Debussy’s sultry Prélude is a work that seems to stretch and yawn in a still, stifling heat. But wake up: we’ve a hike to go on later. Akutagawa’s Triptyque for string orchestra - full of driving rhythms and echoes of Stravinsky, Britten, and the composer’s friend Shostakovich - should get pulses racing. So you’ll be raring to go by the time conductor Yutaka Sado leads us on a cross-country ramble (uncertain weather and all) through Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the musical equivalent of inhaling lungfuls of fresh air.

Yutaka Sado conductor

Photo/Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–1989)

Photo/Yutaka Sado by Jun Yoshimura

Thursday 18.11.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Grieg’s Piano Concerto Rautavaara Lintukoto (Isle of Bliss) (c.12 mins) Grieg Piano Concerto (c.30 mins) Brahms Symphony No.4 (c.40 mins) Garrick Ohlsson piano Hannu Lintu conductor

Grieg’s youthful piano concerto is a crowd-pleaser par excellence and with its famous opening, an outpouring of tunes, and a heart-stopping slow movement, it’s easy to see why. In the hands of the brilliant Garrick Ohlsson and conductor Hannu Lintu expect it to come up fresh as new paint. To follow, another solid-gold classic: Brahms’s Fourth, a Rolls-Royce of a symphony, whose power and polish conceals a profound musical intelligence at work under its bonnet. And we open with Rautavaara’s magical, cinematic evocation of an imaginary island idyll, thronged with migrating birds.

Fans of Sibelius shouldn’t miss it.

Photo/Garrick Ohlsson by Pier Andrea Morolli

Photo/Hannu Lintu by Veikko Kähkönen

Thursday 25.11.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Autumn Season 2021

Beethoven’s Violin Concerto Beethoven Violin Concerto (c.44 mins) Unsuk Chin Subito con forza (c.5 mins) Schumann Symphony No.3 ‘Rhenish’ (c.34 mins)

Veronika Eberle violin David Afkham conductor

Beethoven’s power to inspire composers and performers never dims. When the 16 year-old Veronika Eberle played his serene Violin Concerto with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic at the 2006 Salzburg Festival, the musical world sat up and took notice.

Here she returns to her musical calling-card under the baton of David Afkham. Unsuk Chin has also fallen under Beethoven’s spell: he’s the inspiration for her freshly-minted Subito con forza, which receives its UK Premiere at this summer’s BBC Proms. There’s no denying that Robert Schumann’s Third Symphony bears the stamp of Ludwig’s innovations too - but it has a sweep and panache all of its own, as it conjures vistas of Cologne Cathedral and the Rhineland.

Photo/Unsik Chin by Priska Ketterer

Photo/David Afkham by Gisela Schenker

Thursday 02.12.2021 7.30pm

Feel the Music Live at City Halls

Tchaikovsky Double The Pathétique Symphony Schoenberg Chamber Symphony No.2 (c.20 mins) Korngold Abschiedslieder (Songs of Farewell)* (c.15 mins) Tchaikovsky Symphony No.6 ‘Pathétique’ (c.45 mins)

Karen Cargill mezzo-soprano* Alpesh Chauhan conductor

Here’s a double-whammy aimed right at the heartstrings. Over two concerts on consecutive weeks, experience the thrill and grandeur of two of Tchaikovsky’s most famous works. Up first, his Sixth Symphony, saturated in emotion and packed with great tunes.

But you’ll have your hankies out well before then as Scots mezzo Karen Cargill sings Korngold’s luscious Songs of Farewell. And the orchestra’s Associate Conductor Alpesh Chauhan opens the concert with a work Schoenberg took 33 years to complete, a wonderful showcase for some of our brilliant principal players.

Photo/Karen Cargill by Nadine Boyd

Photo/Alpesh Chauhan by Martin Shields/BBC

Thursday 09.12.2021 7.30pm

Autumn Season 2021

Tchaikovsky Double Piano Concerto No.1 Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 (c.40 mins) Kalinnikov Symphony No.1 (c.37 mins) Pavel Kolesnikov piano Martyn Brabbins conductor

Photo/Pavel Kolesnikov by Eva Vermandel

Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto grabs you with a burst of golden brass, steamrollers you with a thundering piano, has you swooning at a big, beautiful melody… and that’s only the first 20 seconds! Pavel Kolesnikov will bring some Russian authenticity to this, the most passionate of all Romantic piano concertos.

Come for the Tchaikovsky, but stay for a neglected Russian classic that may soon become one of your favourites. Kalinnikov’s First Symphony from 1897 has all the breadth, melodies and lush grandeur associated with Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky but rarely appears in concert halls. Martyn Brabbins is its champion on the podium.

Photo/Martyn Brabbins by Ben Ealovega

Book Online and Save up to 25% this Autumn at

bbc.co.uk/ssosubscriptions Book between 4 and 8 concerts in our Autumn Season and you can save up to 25%. Seniors are entitled to an extra 5% off.

Phone sales resume on Monday 23 August and counter sales may resume at some point in the coming months so please look out for announcements from Glasgow Life. Due to the large stage extension to aid distancing for the players, capacity in the Stalls is limited this Autumn.

Seating in the hall is partially distanced to give everyone space and the capacity of the event is limited. Seats are sold in groups of twos and ones.

If you find that you can’t attend a concert you’ve booked in advance we’ll happily swap your tickets for another BBC SSO concert. Please note that the Box Office requires 24 hours’ notice.

Please note that at the time of going to press the venue can offer online booking only.

Single Ticket Prices

II I ny lco Ba IV

s& all St

s ce rra Te

IV I

IV

II

III

Ba lco ny

III

III IV

St all s&

Te rra ce s

Stage

Area I: £28.50 Area II: £23.50 Area III: £19:50 Area IV: £14.50 (venue booking fees may apply)

Autumn 2021 Subscription Package Prices Seating Area

% Save

I

II

III

IV

8 concerts

25

Standard

£171.04

£141.04

£117.04

£87.04

30

Concession £159.60

£131.60

£109.20

£81.20

7 concerts

20

Standard £159.60 £131.60 £109.20

£81.20

25

Concession £149.66 £123.41 £102.41

£76.16

6 concerts

20

Standard £136.80 £112.80 £93.60

£69.60

25

Concession £128.28

£65.28

5 concerts

15

Standard £121.15 £99.90 £82.90

£61.65

20

Concession £114.00

£58.00

4 concerts

10

Standard £102.60 £84.60 £70.20

£52.20

15

Concession £96.92 £79.92 £66.32

£49.32

£105.78

£94.00

£87.78

£78.00

Book Online at bbc.co.uk/bbcsso glasgowconcerthalls.com Packages Booking Opens Thursday 19 August 2021 General Booking Opens Thursday 2 September 2021 £6 tickets for Under 26s, Students and Unemployed Under 26s, Students (those in full-time education), and Registered Unemployed are entitled to a £6 ticket for themselves (subject to availability).

Proof of status is required.

50% Discount for Registered Disabled Disabled patrons, and a carer where required, will receive a 50% discount on any single full price ticket.

Venue Box Office Charges Please note that the Glasgow Life Box Office charges a fee of £1.50 on all online bookings.

E-Tickets This season we will only be using e-tickets which will be e-mailed to you. Please ensure you have printed off your e-ticket or can display it on your mobile phone for front of house staff.

Programmes There will be no printed programmes this autumn but we will have short introductory notes to each of the concerts available on our website.

Box Office: 0141 353 8000 Monday-Friday 10am-4pm from 23 August 2021 Photo below: City Halls, Glasgow front exterior by McAtter Photography

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

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The majority of listed concerts will be recorded for future broadcast by BBC Radio 3. After broadcast, concerts will be available for 30 days via BBC Sounds, where you can also discover a world of amazing music, radio and podcasts from the BBC by downloading the free app.

The information in this brochure was correct at the time of publishing.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra reserves the right to amend artists and programmes for any of the listed concerts if necessary.

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