When Sir James MacMillan completes a new choral work the world takes notice, because few living composers write with more conviction or imaginative fire. “We need this music right now” wrote The Spectator after the world premiere of his Christmas Oratorio in 2021, and this epic work finds both strangeness and splendour in the most familiar of sacred stories.

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MacMillan's Christmas Oratorio

Barbican Centre

John Rutter and Bob Chilcott are towering figureheads of British choral music. In the year they turn 80 and 70 respectively, the massed BBC choral and orchestral forces pay tribute to some of the most enduringly popular choral music of our time.

Friday Night is Music Night: A Birthday Celebration

Saffron Hall

'Joy and pain interweave in the light of the world…Thousands of years flash by with glory and strength, revealing that which is indestructible'. Extraordinary claims; but then extraordinary is the only word for the heaven-storming choral finale of Ferruccio Busoni’s colossal Piano Concerto: a masterpiece on the scale of a symphony, composed in 1904 by one of Mahler’s greatest fans. 

Gerstein plays Busoni’s Piano Concerto

Oramo conducts Mahler

The BBC’s celebration of singing in East London. Join the BBC Singers, the BBC Symphony Chorus and over 200 local performers for a showcase for talented choirs from across East London.

BBC Symphony Chorus

Dec 19, 2025

MacMillan's Christmas Oratorio

May 4, 2025

Friday Night is Music Night: A Birthday Celebration

BBC Symphony Chorus