Top emerging UK & international conductors showcase their talents with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as the finale of a 5-day course with Martyn Brabbins, featuring Brahms’ Symphony No.3, Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto and the premiere of RCS composer Andrew Jacob’s In the Hall of the Clockwork Dancer.

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RCS & BBC SSO Emerging Conductors Showcase 2026

Glasgow City Hall

Amicus Orchestra are delighted to present this programme in collaboration with flautist Caglayan Barbaros.

Amicus Orchestra & Caglayan Barbaros

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Join us for one of the highlights of the Juniors calendar, the Junior Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra taking place in the Stevenson Hall.

Junior Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra

Join Maxim and the SCO musicians for an electrifying and emotional conclusion to the Season – with one of the most cherished symphonies of them all.

Dvořák 'New World' Symphony

Usher Hall

City Halls

Perth Concert Hall

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ_ZQW5C2pw&amp;t=2s

The Artelize Podcast Presenting Will Shutes: 'Bring it down out of the clouds to human being level'

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFe6mW6x9pc

The Artelize Podcast: 'Amplifying What Makes Us Human'. A conversation with Zuly E. Inirio

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

From a daring maritime adventure to a captivating showcase for the soulful cello – in the company of vibrant Principal Conductor Maxim Emelyanychev and exceptional SCO Principal Cello Philip Higham.

Schumann Cello Concerto

Aberdeen Music Hall

The Queen's Hall

In the process of composing, Naomi Pinnock tapes a collection of images, quotes, and words to the wall behind her desk, describing them as “guideposts… stones to touch for the sometimes blind journey of making.” The work’s title is a quote by Amy Sillman, whose paintings unfold in layers with possibly dozens of other potential paintings beneath the surface—paths not taken, layers covered, a visceral searching for emergent shapes.

Martin Smolka also finds inspiration in the drawings, quotes, and notes kept on his desk. He writes, “I weave various pieces of paper between the strings of the talking drum,” a wooden hourglass-shaped African instrument. Among them is the ancient Seikilos Song: “As long as you're alive, shine, don't be sad at all; life is short, time asks for its due.” Guided by these words and “without censorship by my compositional intellect”, Smolka played freely at his piano, imagining meadows, streams, birds, trees, and clouds, gradually shaping what endured into delicate, mostly quiet orchestral sounds.

The BBC commission and world premiere that ends this concert is written by Nicole Mitchell, a creative flutist, composer, bandleader, and educator. Founder of Black Earth Ensemble, Black Earth Strings, Ice Crystal, and Sonic Projections, Mitchell’s music celebrates African American culture while reaching across genres and integrating new ideas with moments in the legacy of jazz, gospel, experimentalism, pop, and African percussion.

TECTONICS: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra 2

City Halls and Old Fruitmarket

British composer Hannah Kendall’s music is “searingly impactful” (The New Statesman), bridging musical cultures while both honouring and challenging contemporary traditions. The title of this work is from Lemn Sissay’s poem Godsell, reflecting on the biblical figure of Lot’s wife. As Kendall explains: “Part of the string ensemble has their instruments altered by dreadlock cuffs, which are malleable metallic Afro hair accessories. The strings are bound together by the cuffs making pitch production unpredictable, as well as creating a harsh, yet often brittle and fragile sound quality... Perhaps I see something of myself in Lot's wife: her ‘disobedience’ lies in looking back; mine in ‘disobeying,’ or at least rubbing up against, the norms of how Western classical instruments are expected to be played and sound.”

TECTONICS: BBC SSO Strings play Hannah Kendall

Old Fruitmarket

No thunderbolts and lightning, maybe, but plenty of kaleidoscopic colour, whirling rhythms and strong flavours as flamboyant Greek-Albanian violinist Jonian Ilias-Kadesha directs a concert dedicated to the gutsy glories of Czech music.

Bohemian Rhapsodies

Classical and folk join forces for a thrilling celebration of dance, in this joyfully unconventional programme masterminded and conducted by much-loved Finnish violin pioneer Pekka Kuusisto.

Beethoven, Pekka & the Dreamers’ Circus

With its sweeping melodies and raw emotion, Tchaikovsky’s famous Pathétique is a powerful exploration of love, loss and fate. It’s music that speaks from the heart, and under Principal Guest Conductor Delyana Lazarova’s baton, every note tells a story.

Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony

Music Hall, Aberdeen

Italian-born Lorenza Borrani is fast becoming one of the SCO’s closest friends and collaborators. She returns for her second concert this Season with an evening of wit, humour and magical evocations.

Borrani & Beethoven

Nicola Benedetti has performed Mendelssohn’s exhilarating Violin Concerto for many years. Bringing together sublime lyrical beauty and fizzing violin fireworks, the Concerto is the ideal showcase for the world-renowned Scottish violin virtuoso’s consummate talents. Discover Benedetti’s compelling, profoundly beautiful vision of the piece in the company of her long-time musical collaborators: the SCO’s exceptional musicians and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev.

Benedetti plays Mendelssohn

Out of silence comes a quiet hymn. Suddenly the sun breaks through, the birds sing – and to a dancing rhythm and a flurry of drums, Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony is on its way. Sounds fun? This is music with a huge heart and a limitless supply of melodies, but it’s brimming over with poetry too, and Ryan Wigglesworth will savour every moment of this most life-affirming of Romantic symphonies.

Mozart's Piano Concerto No.27

A piano climbing from darkness to light. A pulsing rhythm, bright with energy and colour. And a passionate melody, soaring against a storm-swept sky. The opening of any piece of music draws you into a new emotional world, and however familiar the melodies that follow, a great live performance makes you feel like you’re experiencing it for the first time.

Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto

Mozart’s final trilogy of symphonies are visionary, pioneering works, as powerful as they are passionate, and represent a lifetime of emotion and experience from a composer at the height of his musical creativity. They’re also a mystery, written together in a blaze of white-hot creativity, though it’s not known why – some even suggest Mozart may have conceived them as a single, monumental mega-symphony.

Mozart’s Last Three Symphonies

He’s been called a “musical omnivore” but anyone who’s experienced the BBC SSO’s former Chief Conductor (and current Creative Partner) Ilan Volkov knows that he’s an artist who sees music differently – and turns every concert into a voyage of discovery.

Debussy, Ravel & Rare Gem

A quiet pulse, and a long, chant-like melody that seems to breathe the air of old Russia – it’s an unlikely way to begin one of the most difficult and brilliant piano concertos ever created. Rachmaninov’s Third has been called the “Everest of piano concertos” but if anyone’s equipped to scale it, it’s the superb young British virtuoso Isata Kanneh-Mason and the BBC SSO’s newly-appointed Principal Guest Conductor Delyana Lazarova.

Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto

Wind players from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra perform side by side with the RCS Woodwind department students.

Fridays at One: Scottish Chamber Orchestra Winds Side-by-Side

Passion beyond reason. No-one who was present when the BBC SSO premiered Sir James MacMillan’s The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the Proms in 1990 will forget the impact it made – a new voice in Scottish music, speaking with uncompromising emotional power. A landmark both in British music and the orchestra’s own history, we couldn’t celebrate our 90th season without Isobel Gowdie.

Rachmaninov's Second Symphony

The RCS Jazz Orchestra returns to the Stevenson Hall with a showcase of performers from across our undergraduate and postgraduate jazz programmes.

Orchestral events in Glasgow

RCS & BBC SSO Emerging Co...

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Amicus Orchestra & Caglay...

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Junior Conservatoire Symp...

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Dvořák 'New World' Sympho...

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

The Artelize Podcast Pres...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: 'Am...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

Schumann Cello Concerto

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

TECTONICS: BBC Scottish S...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

TECTONICS: BBC SSO String...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Bohemian Rhapsodies

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Beethoven, Pekka & the Dr...

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Tchaikovsky's Pathétique ...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Borrani & Beethoven

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Benedetti plays Mendelsso...

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Mozart's Piano Concerto N...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Rachmaninov's Second Pian...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Mozart’s Last Three Symph...

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Debussy, Ravel & Rare Gem...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Rachmaninov's Third Piano...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Fridays at One: Scottish ...

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Rachmaninov's Second Symp...

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

RCS Jazz Orchestra

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland