Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra announces Autumn season in Dorset and on-line

Shirley Thompson and BSO Resound

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has announced plans for 12 socially distanced performances from the Lighthouse, Poole, for its Autumn season. The performances will be available on-line, and will be open to a socially distanced audience when government restrictions allow. The seasons opens on 30 September 2020 when the orchestra's chief conductor, Kirill Karabits, conducts a programme of Bach, Ives, Beethoven's Symphony No 7, and Britten's arrangement of the third movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 (the work originally planned to open the season), and the Autumn season ends in December with Robert Howarth conducting a programme of Handel, Bach, Corelli and Vivaldi with soprano Anna Devin performing arias from Messiah.

The 2020/21 season will also include two major new commissions, a symphonic work from German-based Azervaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose work fuses Azerbaijani traditions with Western classical music, and a chamber work for BSO Resound, the orchestra's disabled-led ensemble, from Shirley Thompson to mark the 60th anniversary of the Independent Living Movement, and the orchestra will be giving the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Absence which was commissioned for the Beethoven centenary. The orchestra's Voices from the East continues, with Karabits conducting a work by the Ukrainian composer Theodore Akimenko (1876-1945), who was Stravinsky's first teacher, and the Trumpet Concerto by the Soviet Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunan (1920-2012)

Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is the orchestra's artist in residence for 2020/21, and he will be performing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in December.

All the concerts will be an hour long without an interval, and the stage at the Lighthouse is being extended to allow the members of the orchestra to be socially distant.

Full details from the orchestra's website.