Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra brought a wide ranging programme from the south coast for their annual Proms visit.

Trophy room glass display cases and glassy-eyed stuffed animals are the setting for a distinctive take on Wagner's epic music drama. 

Sex and violence bubbles beneath the surface in this near-faultless staging of Carmen. 

Lalo's sunny slice of Seville formed the centrepiece of a programme by the BSO and James Gaffigan that completely lived up to its seductive “Exotic Spice” billing.

Stunning musicianship and passionate commitment gave two repertoire works a new lease of life. 

Schumann and Wagner were twinned in a programme focusing on works written in 1850 with impressvie results. 

Karabits leads an adventurous programme at the BSO’s Poole home, with flamboyant violinist Nemanja Radulović on surprisingly refined form in the Barber Concerto.

A dazzling soloist from the orchestra’s ranks and a charming Schubert symphony with conductor Nicholas McGegan

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra produced wonderfully supportive playing for pianist Alexander Romanovsky in Rachmaninov’s youthful First Piano Concerto and vividly brought to life Martinů’s Fourth Symphony.

Strong vocal and orchestral performances and a tour-de-force staging of Act II light up Grange Park's production of Verdi's political thriller of the dark days of the Spanish inquisition.

Using Stephen Medcalf’s 2008 staging, this opening night of love and loneliness was a feast for the eyes, a musical triumph and a dramatic tour-de-force that tugged at the heart strings.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra produced a varied programme at their Lighthouse concert, but with mixed results: illuminating Walton, but uneven Sibelius.

Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and the BSO capture the contrasting colours in French and Russian music. 

Strong, stirring performances from Sinaisky and the Bournemouth players offered few opportunities for reflection in a night of Beethoven and Elgar. 

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra returned once again to the Colston Hall to perform three very different works. Steven Isserlis headlined the evening with a fantastic rendition of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 1.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra returned to the Proms with a trio of works, composed between the turbulent years 1944-45. 

Stephen Medcalf's meticulous staging of Tchaikovsky's bitter masterpiece is lit up by Jung Soo Yun's Lensky, giving a direct injection of emotions: verismo before its time.

Grange Park’s Samson et Dalila doesn’t hit the bull’s eye, but it’s well worth the visit for a decent all-round staging of an unfamiliar work, an excellent rendering of its sumptuous score and for a thrilling piece of singing by Carl Tanner.

 Despite a stellar Mimì, a disappointing La bohème at Grange Park Opera.

A thrilling evening at Poole’s Lighthouse with the BSO and Chorus plus a quartet of superb soloists, conducted by Kirill Karabits in an unforgettable performance of Verdi’s Requiem. 

A very exciting evening at Poole’s Lighthouse with the BSO and artist in residence Sunwook Kim playing Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto together for the first time. 

Khachaturian’s innate gift for melody and Dvořák’s penchant for grandeur and drama led to an evening of sumptuous and exciting music-making from the BSO. 

Sally Matthews comes home to the South of England to give a beautifully delicate and heart-rending performance of Strauss’ Four Last Songs with the BSO.

An unusual programme of music from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, viewing the passing of youth through a lens of nostalgia and sadness but, at the same time, also dreaming of the sheer joy and exuberance of youth.

This concert, in a nifty piece of skilful programming, comprised a Beethoven sandwich, with Penderecki’s Fourth Symphony as the filling, both composers who clearly enjoy pushing the boundaries of classical form.

The BSO seamlessly jumped between all-out dramatic terror, soppy love and adventure in an eclectic mix of 21 pieces of "heroic" film and video game music from the past five decades. 

A fantastic concert with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the charismatic Daniele Rustioni, with violinist Tasmin Little in Mendelssohn. 

It may have been an absolutely freezing night in Poole but the BSO treated us to a heart-warming evening of life-affirming music, world-class music-making.

This concert, given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, was a great start to the new year! 

Kees Bakels has worked with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra many times over the last 30 years and the rapport that he and the BSO share is very apparent. 

Mahler’s Blumine, Beethoven’s rarely performed Triple Concerto and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony were given a fresh coat of paint by the BSO.

Simone Lamsma returned to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to perform Dvořák's Violin Concerto, a highly lyrical and rich work. Also in the programme was Sibelius's triumphant and dramatic Fifth Symphony.

Spirited performances from the Bournemouth Symphony, conducted by Julian Kuerti, in a trio of Russian classics. 

This was a concert that provided the opportunity for so many individual musicians to shine and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s shone brightly, showcasing its truly amazing talent. 

Seven works by English composers created a journey from beauty to death as Remembrance day approaches. There wasn't much dwelling on the horrors of war itself, but plenty of human emotion and a sense of life sadly lost.

Kiril Karabits brings out the climaxes, in a solid performance of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony in Basingstoke, couple with Mozart's Clarinet Concerto.

The beginning of a concert season given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is always eagerly anticipated – especially when directed by their Principal, award-winning conductor, Kirill Karabits.

Bringing Peter Grimes to Grange Park a year after the Britten centenary is an enormous challenge. With ‘Grimes on the Beach’ still fresh in the memory, the task of recreating the Suffolk coast in Hampshire’s idyllic countryside might have seemed a step too far. 

Kirill Karabits’ imaginative programme revealed CPE Bach as a difficult composer to place, with a symphony bearing all the hallmarks of a young Mozart and an ode with pre-echoes of Haydn’s The Creation, counterbalanced by the UK première of his 1784 St John Passion where, in the chorales at least, CPE demonstrated that he was a chip off the old block.

Kirill Karabits directs the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in electrfying Prokofiev, while Nicola Benedetti impresses in Korngold in Dublin. 

The theme to the evening’s programme at the Colston Hall was “The Power of Love”. Spread over a century, the three works programmed were all romantically driven.

Never failing to provide an interesting programme, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra performed the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich under the baton of the BSO’s Conductor Laureate Andrew Litton.

Wednesday night’s Prom saw the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and their principal conductor Kirill Karabits give the fourth instalment of the season’s Tchaikovsky symphony cycle with the sunny, confident Third, in D major. As the programme noted, the D major symphony is somewhat hard to place between the folksy, popular appeal of the first two and the high psychological drama of nos. 4–6.

The scene in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin where the peasants, weary from gathering in the harvest, sing and dance for the woman who owns the estate (and, for that matter, owns them) is perhaps not the best example of gritty social realism in opera.

Good programming makes for a good concert. Chosen works must fit well together, providing enough musical contrast to keep things interesting, but they must not be so different as to jar listeners with alien soundworlds. All too often, organisers whip up concerts in which any link between pieces are entirely superficial and completely amusical.

This past weekend offered a taste of the great British summer with temperatures soaring into the high 20s. And yet, despite the lure of an afternoon spent reclining on the sunny beaches of the South Coast, large crowds flocked to the Lighthouse in Poole to watch the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra perform in their annual Benevolent Fund Concert, led by Portuguese conductor Rui Pinheiro.

If ever a concert could be described as a firework, this was it. The stage was ignited with music and we waited for the best bit - that crucial, beautiful explosion of colour. As part of the Colston Hall’s International Classical Season, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra performed the iconic choral work Carmina Burana by Carl Orff (1895-1982).

For its centenary concert – given on 11th September 2011, in Cheltenham, and at Poole Lighthouse on Tuesday 13th September – Bournemouth Symphony Chorus paid tribute to those who fell victim to the catastrophic act of terrorism that shook the world ten years before.

Each year, BBC Proms provides a great opportunity for the UK regional orchestras (in particular for the non-BBC orchestras such as the Bournemouth Symphony, the Halle and the Liverpool Philharmonic) to showcase themselves. This year, I decided to sample Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony as I have been hearing good things about this partnership for a while.

In a musical tour around Great Britain, the dramatic focus was centred on Wales and Scotland, with James MacMillian’s Three Interludes from The Sacrifice: and The Confession of Isobel Gowdie opening and closing the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s concert at the Basingstoke Anvil.