BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Anthony Hermus with soprano Katharine Dain, plays Strauss's Four Last Songs and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.
The BBC National Orchestra of Wales are at Brangwyn Hall on Saturday 16 January 2027, with conductor Anthony Hermus and soprano Katharine Dain. It's a double bill of Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, two of the biggest names in classical music, paired together at the height of their expressive powers.
The first half is Strauss's Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, just a year before he died. They're some of the most luminous farewells in music, setting deeply contemplative texts and drawing the listener into what he called 'the magic circle of the night'. It's a set of songs that looks back on a life, and having Katharine Dain on the soprano parts puts a voice right at the centre of it.
After the interval, the focus shifts to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde: An Orchestral Passion, an arrangement by Henk de Vlieger. This is Wagner at his most revolutionary: a sumptuous orchestral synthesis whose lush romantic surface conceals a daring harmonic language that transformed music history. It's a huge, sweeping piece of writing, and hearing it as a standalone orchestral work lets you focus on the scale of the sound without the opera around it.
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The whole thing is part of the BBC NOW 2026-27 season, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales accompanies the concert with digital programmes full of detail about the music, the performers and the repertoire. It's a matinee, starting at 15:00 at Brangwyn Hall in Swansea.
