Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

Noticeboard posts:
30.07.25 Awe-inspiring live music for everyone: the BSO’s performances in 2025/26
26.06.25 Portsmouth Guildhall Square Lights Up: Two Open-Air Concerts with Full Orchestra this August
14.10.24 Profile: Enyi Opkara, conductor
14.03.24 The Classical Series continues at Portsmouth Guildhall
18.01.24 Profile: Jesper Svedberg, Principal Cellist
12.06.23 The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra offers a Chichester Cathedral summer concert
15.05.23 BSO 2023/24 New Season: now live
02.01.22 The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Winter/Spring 2022 Season from Portsmouth Guildhall
11.05.20 Profile: Tim Fisher, violinist

“No other regional British orchestras – few London ones for that matter – offer more interesting programming the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra” The Daily Telegraph

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is a world-class ensemble known for spearheading change both on and off the stage since 1893. The Orchestra is highly regarded for its ambitious programming and recordings, with its Prokofiev cycle and survey of Eastern European music under the baton of Chief Conductor Kirill Karabits receiving recent acclaim. The BSO serves a 10,000-square mile region, touring around 140 performances each year to audiences in South West England and beyond.

A bold champion of new talent the BSO boasts an enviable list of principal conductors, from Marin Alsop – the first female principal conductor of a major UK orchestra – to Constantin Silvestri, Paavo Berglund and Andrew Litton. A commissioner of new music, the BSO has worked with composers Mark Anthony Turnage, Sally Beamish and James Macmillan in recent years.

The BSO’s discography charts a number of landmark moments in 20th-century music including its pioneering 1914 recordings under Dan Godfrey for HMV; seminal performances of Nordic works with Paavo Berglund in the 1970s; to a survey of American and Soviet works – under Litton, Alsop and Karabits.

Changing lives through the power of music remains at the core of all that the BSO does. The Orchestra were Alzheimer’s Society’s ‘Dementia Friendly Organisation of the Year’ in 2017, before presenting the world’s first professional disabled-led ensemble at the BBC Proms in 2018.