BBC - Symphony Orchestra

HUGH WOOD Piano Concerto (BBC commission)
Andrew Davis conductor
Royal Albert Hall (Prom), 10 September 1991
Andrew Davis, chief conductor of the BBC SO until 2000, was a keen advocate for Hugh Wood's music, premiering and recording this Piano Concerto written for Joanna MacGregor.

SIMON BAINBRIDGEAd ora incerta (BBC commission)
Simon Bainbridge conductor
Royal Festival Hall, 29 March 1995
Commissioned for BBC Radio 3's British Music Year, this song cycle for contralto (Susan Bickley) and bassoon (Kim Walker) to texts by Primo Levi went on to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Prize, and was recorded. Bainbridge wrote a new work for the BBC SO's 70th birthday concert.

POUL RUDERS Concerto in pieces (BBC commission)
Andrew Davis conductor
Birmingham, Music Live, 28 May 1995
For the first BBC Music Live festival, Poul Ruders was commissioned by the BBC to write a new Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra which subsequently became a hit at the Last Night of the Proms in 1996.

JUDITH WEIR Moon and Star (BBC commission)
Andrew Davis conductor
Royal Albert Hall (Prom), 11 August 1995
The BBC commissioned Judith Weir's outstandingly successful first opera A Night at the Chinese Opera, and the Missa Del Cid for BBCTV in 1988. Weir went on to write All the Ends of the Earth for the BBC SO series Sounding the Millennium in the autumn of 1999.

GYORGY KURTAG Stele (UK premiere)
Andrew Davis conductor
Royal Albert Hall (Prom), 27 August 1996
This extraordinary orchestral work by one's of today's most original composers has been recorded and revived several times since its premiere here in 1996.

COLIN MATTHEWS Renewal (BBC commission)
Oliver Knussen conductor
Royal Festival Hall, 29 September 1996
Commssioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the BBC Third Programme, this choral and orchestral work was the winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society award for large-scale composition in 1997.

ELGAR/ANTHONY PAYNE Symphony No 3
(First public performance)
Andrew Davis conductor
Royal Festival Hall, 16 February 1998
This realisation of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony proved to be a sensational success, and received its 100th performance this summer. The BBC SO's collaboration with Elgar goes back to the premiere of his Nursery Suite in 1931.

JULIAN ANDERSON The Stations of the Sun (BBC commission)
Andrew Davis conductor
Royal Albert Hall (Prom), 21 july 1998
Among many recent BBC SO commissions from the younger generation of composers, this outstanding work was premiered in the 1998 Proms and has already been performed again in Europe and the US; it is being recorded by Oliver Knussen.

1990