BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus 2026-27 Barbican Season Inmo Yang plays Bartók’s First Violin Concerto

Joy, longing, and the kind of sorrow so bitter it turns into sweetness – you never know what a human heart can bear until you put it to the test. The young Bartók poured all the pain of a doomed romance into his fiery First Violin Concerto. Brahms, meanwhile, wrestled for years with a symphony that transformed personal tragedy into a triumph of hope, crowned with a melody to stir the soul.

Pure passion, in other words, from Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and that goes double when the multi-award winning violinist Inmo Yang performs Bartók’s searing concerto. First, though, a burst of joy from the Carpathian mountains. Enescu’s exuberant 'Romanian Rhapsody' begins with a drinking song and ends with a knees-up. Sakari Oramo loves it, and you’re about to hear why.