BBC SSO 2026-27 Season Afternoon Performance: Britten's Les Illuminations

What dreams may come: the night holds its terrors, but it’s a time for fantasy, too. When the 27-year old Benjamin Britten encountered the sensual, surreal imagination of the poet Arthur Rimbaud… well, the result was Les Illuminations, and maybe it’s best to let the music do the talking. You can be sure that our soloist Erika Baikoff won’t hold back: this BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist is already famous for her “pure and very expressive” voice. First comes a brand new work from one of Britain’s most original young musical dramatists, and then Ryan Wigglesworth waltzes us off to the silken, seductive Vienna of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. It’s a love story, of course, and musical dreams don’t come much sweeter.