Luscious pizzicato and arco lines make up the contrasting layers and textures that characterise Libby Croad's Suite for String Orchestra which was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for International Women's Day in 2018.

Grammy-nominated Dobrinka Tabakova is composer-in-residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra. Her Centuries of Meditations was selected by the PRS Foundation as one of the best pieces of British orchestral music from the past 25 years. Written for Britain's great cathedrals, the work is noted for inviting engaged active listening in an architecturally beautiful environment.

Juliette Pochin and Lemn Sissay collaborated on a new piece for chamber orchestra and semi-chorus, Let There Be Peace. A beautiful setting of Lemn’s poem, so rich in metaphor, the work was commissioned for the 2020 Brighton Festival.

The concert concludes with Mozart's Requiem which was famously completed after his death by his pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. Uniquely for this performance, the Sanctus and Benedictus, thought to be exclusively the work of Süssmayr, will be substituted for movements written by Mozart himself.

BFC Chairman, Richard Blows, says, “This concert offers something genuinely new and exciting. Libby Croad and Dobrinka Tabakova write so beautifully and are in the ascendance of their careers. Lemn Sissay and Juliette Pochin’s collaboration has an immediate impact on the listener, and a small variation on a firm favourite in the form of Mozart’s Requiem is certain to make for a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon”.