| Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich (1840-1893) | Piano Concerto no. 1 in B flat minor, Op.23 (original version) | |
| Smyth, Dame Ethel (1858-1944) | Mass in D major |
| BBC Symphony Orchestra | |
| Martyn Brabbins | Conductor |
| Lucy Crowe | Soprano |
| Catriona Morison | Mezzo-soprano |
| Ben Johnson | Tenor |
| Duncan Rock | Bass-baritone |
| Pavel Kolesnikov | Piano |
| BBC Symphony Chorus |
The BBC Symphony Chorus launches its 90th birthday season with a concert featuring Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D and Tchaikovsky’s heartfelt First Piano Concerto.
Admired by Adrian Boult and Thomas Beecham, and counting Tchaikovsky among her personal friends and supporters, composer-suffragette Ethel Smyth was a pioneer both in and out of the concert hall. Her Mass in D, fittingly performed in the centenary year of women’s suffrage, is a major work whose highlights include the blazing Sanctusand a delicately lovely Benedictus. It is paired with the heart-on-sleeve heroics of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto for which former BBC New Generation Artist Pavel Kolesnikov is the soloist, a young Russian pianist whose free-spirited energy and conviction is a natural fit for this repertoire.
