BBC NOW 2025-26 Season 'Grace'

In our annual ‘Grace’ series exploring both the music of Grace Williams and female composers in music, this November we showcase works by living composers Anna Semple and Julia Wolfe, all under the baton of Stephanie Childress.

Written for the Malcolm Street Orchestra, Anna Semple’s The Gates plays with the ideas of recall and memory, specifically the musical illustration of an image of a set of gates seen up close, then reimagined from afar but not remembered exactly.

Julia Wolfe’s Pretty is inspired by the distortions and reverberations of rock and roll and is a raucous celebration of the connotations of what being “pretty” means.

In a change to the previously advertised repertoire, BBC NOW will perform Elizabeth Maconchy’s Serenata Concertante, with its contrast between lyrical, slower movements and more rhythmic, vigorous ones.

But first we turn to the series’ namesake, Grace Williams and her Ballads for Orchestra.