BBC SSO 2026/27: Respighi: Panoramas of Rome - Afternoon Performance

“The sea hurls itself into the sun’s great embrace; they kiss on soft sand, where rolling breakers shine”.

Strong stuff; but when the beauty of nature and landscape met the imagination of the composers in today’s concert, emotions tended to catch fire.

Guest conductor Emilia Hoving joins the “warm, bright” British baritone (and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist) Andrew Hamilton on a guided tour for the ears: from Respighi’s glittering panoramas of Rome, to Grace Williams’s bracing Sea Sketches - a Welsh composer in London, re-imagining the cliffs and horizons of her native Glamorgan.

And at the untamed heart of a concert packed with colour, Chausson’s gorgeous Poème: passion beyond reason, in music that glows like an impressionist seascape.