# BBCSO/Stasevska review – Caroline Shaw’s cosmic visions meet Barber’s lyrical brilliance

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/bbcso-stasevska-review-caroline-shaws-cosmic-visions-meet-barbers-lyrical-brilliance/
- Published: 2026-11-02T11:09:56+00:00
- Updated: 2026-11-02T11:38:32+00:00
- Original publisher: The Guardian (publisher lean: Left)
- Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/nov/02/bbcso-stasevska-review-caroline-shaw-barbican-goosby
- Topics: Art, Culture, Space, Technology

## Key points

- 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.

## Summary

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.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.