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BBCSO/Stasevska review – Caroline Shaw’s cosmic visions meet Barber’s lyrical brilliance
The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s London premiere of Caroline Shaw’s *The Listeners* used sounds from the Voyager Golden Record and texts about space and humanity to explore the scale of the cosmos. The work was imaginative and thought-provoking, though some movements felt too briefly developed to fulfil the subject’s potential.
At 35 minutes, the piece combined spoken greetings in 55 languages, Carl Sagan’s “pale blue dot” speech, poetry and a wordless choir, with Lotte Betts-Dean and Florian Störtz as soloists. Before it, Dalia Stasevska led a dramatic tone poem by Borys Lyatoshynsky, while Randall Goosby gave a lyrical, richly nuanced account of Barber’s Violin Concerto and an upbeat encore by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson.
In short
- Caroline Shaw’s cosmic work made its London premiere.
- The 35-minute piece was compelling but felt underdeveloped.
- Randall Goosby impressed in Barber’s Violin Concerto.
Explained simply
Caroline Shaw is an American composer whose music often brings voices and instruments together in unusual ways. The Voyager Golden Record, launched aboard two spacecraft in 1977, carries sounds and greetings from Earth; astronomer Carl Sagan helped shape its contents and later described Earth as a “pale blue dot” seen from space.
Samuel Barber was an American composer known for expressive, lyrical music, including his Violin Concerto. Borys Lyatoshynsky was a Ukrainian composer whose orchestral works often have a dramatic scale, while Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson was an American composer and conductor. These composers’ works sit alongside one another in a concert led by Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska, with American violinist Randall Goosby as soloist.