A meaty, not to say tough programme: Sakari Oramo, Guy Johnston & BBC Symphony Orchestra in Britten’s Cello Symphony, Turnage premiere & Sibelius at the BBC Proms

Mark-Anthony Turnage: Festen Suite – Sakari Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

Mark-Anthony Turnage: Festen Suite, Britten: Cello Symphony, Sibelius: Symphony No. 2; Guy Johnston, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed 28 July 2026

Britten’s gnarly Cello Symphony gets a rare Proms outing with a poetic solo from Guy Johnston alongside Turnage’s engaging (if self indulgent) suite from his recent opera, and Oramo in fine form in Sibelius

For the second of his five BBC Proms this year on Tuesday 28 July 2026 at the Royal Albert Hall, Sakari Oramo conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the UK premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s Festen Suite (a BBC co-commission), Britten’s Cello Symphony (with soloist Guy Johnston) and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2. It was a meaty, not to say tough programme with each work being, in its way, substantial and challenging. And in true Proms tradition, the links between the works seemed tenuous, perhaps the thread was simply Oramo himself.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 2024 opera Festen (with a libretto by Lee Hall) premiered at Covent Garden (winning a 2025 Royal Philharmonic Society Award) and was also seen at Finnish National Opera. Turnage’s suite from the opera premiered in Copenhagen earlier this year with Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alondra de la Parra. Turnage has constructed an eight movement suite from the second and third acts of the opera, with some movements transferring arias onto the orchestra (solo lines played variously by saxophone and cello). The work is scored for a huge orchestra, triple woodwind, saxophones, brass and considerable percussion.

As with any suite taken from a dramatic work, the question remains do I need to know the original piece. Works like the suites from Bizet’s Carmen or Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker work because the composers created such terrific tunes. Turnage’s opera doesn’t quite have that, but there are underlying popular elements to his music that make it engaging and the suite’s movements demonstrate a satisfying variety. His writing demonstrates a fondness for dense, opaque harmonies but also a vivid variety of colour and timbre.

Britten: Cello Symphony – Guy Johnston, Sakari Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

‘Prelude’ was all insistent rhythms and dramatic gestures, with hints of jazz-inspired melodies. Then ‘Blue or Green’ provided something lyrical and relaxed, almost Copland-esque but a sense of underlying drama led to a highly tense conclusion. ‘Conga’ evoked memories of Bernstein’s conga from Wonderful Town. Here the music was rhythmically busy with a sinuous melody over the top of complex multi-layered textures. ‘Grandma’s Song’ featured a touching, intimate solo cello but with the wind and brass providing more disturbing elements. The final four movements played continuously. ‘Interlude 1’ was a jazzy, big-band number that became increasingly hysterical leading into ‘The Fight’, which was all jagged edges and fragments with ominous drum beats at the end. By contrast ‘Linda’s aria’ was more intimate and lyrical, yet the music became more massive, textures denser and more intense, then ‘Interlude 2’ rumbled from the deep with fragments rippling over. The final coda was almost perfunctory, ‘that’s all folks!’.

I managed to miss Festen, the opera, when it premiered, so my experience of the suite was not coloured by memories of the stage work. The suite formed an engaging twenty minutes, certainly not quite as intense as the subject matter of the original film might have suggested. Turnage certainly uses all of the instruments in the large orchestra, but the
sheer profusion of players felt like something of a self-indulgence, and
you wished that Turnage had created something a bit more portable.

Britten: Cello Symphony – Guy Johnston, Sakari Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

Britten’s Cello Symphony was written in 1963, one of a group of works created for Mstislav Rostropovich. Written just after the War Requiem, it is a dark, rather gnarly piece that perhaps needs a cellist of Rostropovich’s bravura and sense of large personality to bring off. Certainly it is not a popular work, and it has had only three previous appearances at the BBC Proms (1983, 1988 and 1991) with the present one coming after a gap of 35 years. I am not sure that the work is ideal for the Royal Albert Hall. Britten does not use a vast orchestra yet here Oramo was conducting a huge body of BBC Symphony Orchestra strings. The results sometimes meant that Johnston’s performance, often thoughtful and poetic, felt a bit reticent and the solo line did not always shine out over the orchestra, creating more of an effect of a lone voice against the multitude.

From the dark opening material and uncompromising cello chords, the first movement had a sense of melancholy and determination, often the solo line weaving in and out of complex orchestral textures. One of the characteristics of this hybrid piece is that the orchestra is not just there to support the soloist, it has arguments in its own right. There were moments of tender beauty from Johnston, but also that feeling of a lone voice alongside anger in the orchestra. The conclusion of the movement seemed to partake of one of Britten’s favourite devices, the ground bass, as the music wound down. The second movement was an eerie, skittish skittering, as if Mendelssohn’s fairies had developed sharp teeth and a disturbing edge. The slow movement mixed rich harmonies with a sense of slow ceremonial marked by changes of instrumental texture and colour. There was a sense of slow build to the cadenza (with timpani) that again showcased the cello’s uncompromising nature. The finale was a passacaglia yet began with a surprisingly perky trumpet over strenuous cello chords. This was a movement where the orchestra was definitely showcased, though Johnston gave us some magnificently direct double stopping, along with more poetic moments including lovely tremolando over orchestral fragments. There were hints and echoes of other Britten in the orchestra, and though the solo line turned contemplative, the orchestra gathered forces and we ended with the sense of Johnston as that lone voice against the multitude.

As an encore, Johnston gave us the final movement from Britten’s Cello Suite No. 3, a final memory of Britten and Rostropovich. 

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 – Sakari Oramo, BBC Symphony Orchestra – BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

After the interval, Oramo returned to home territory with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 2 from 1901-1903, a work which has been seen regularly (and frequently) at the BBC Proms, albeit with a 15-year slump in the late 60s and 70s. Oramo clearly relished the episodic nature of Sibelius’s writing, the stop-start nature of the structure and there were plenty of significant pauses. But he drew these pieces together into a satisfying whole, building structures out of wider motifs, rather than ensuring a beautiful glossy surface. The music was familiar, of course, but Oramo did not make it comforting and there was no sense of donning a familiar old jumper.

Things opened with warm, relaxed textures yet highly evocative, the movement moving between urgency and ease, yet always with an underlying intensity and edge. The second movement, beginning with those mysterious bass pizzicati and haunted bassoon, was hardly comforting and there was an underlying impetus throughout, fast incisive drama finding a release in lyricism, the movement ending with a combination of grandeur, bleakness and intimacy that seemed to define Sibelius. The third movement varied between fast furious and urgent, with contrasts of volume and timbre, alongside the more relaxed trio with the melody unfolding as if there was all the time. The big tune in the finale was glorious, sweeping all before it, but there were disturbing undertones and moments when things unwound, but the ending was triumphant and inexorable.