BBC NOW 2026-27 Season Fate & Fantasy

Fate & Fantasy, conducted by Otto Tausk, celebrates music’s power to tell stories and summon vivid worlds. The concert opens with Anna Clyne’s Masquerade, an energetic, sharply coloured piece inspired by eighteenth century promenade music and the spectacle of masked celebration. Tumultuous opening gestures give way to lyrical string writing, capturing the excitement, elegance and theatrical flair of music entwined with dance and disguise. Then we welcome, Stephen Hough to perform Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3. It is one of the most demanding and thrilling works in the repertoire, renowned for its extraordinary virtuosity, the concerto marries relentless technical brilliance with sweeping lyricism, expressive melodic lines and glowing orchestral colour, standing as a pinnacle of the composer’s output.

After the interval, Janáček’s Taras Bulba plunges into a world of stark drama and tragedy. Drawing on a brutal sixteenth century tale of war and loss, Janáček fuses moments of romance and violence in his urgent, patchy orchestral style. The programme concludes with Strauss’s Don Juan, the work that launched his international reputation. A dazzling orchestral tone poem, it transforms the legendary seducer’s exploits into a sequence of vivid musical episodes, rich in colour, swagger and energy. A fitting climax to an evening of fantasy, fate and irresistible storytelling.