Bestia is a new 23-minute concerto for trumpet and orchestra, written for the Austrian soloist Selina Ott and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and The Florida Orchestra.

The work received its world premiere at the Barbican on 24 April 2026 under the baton of Fabien Gabel. The performance was part of the BBCSO’s ‘Making America’ series, marking the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The Florida Orchestra will present the concerto’s US premiere in 2027.

Programme

Bernard Herrmann
Suite from ‘Vertigo’

Ryan Latimer
Bestia: Concerto for Trumpet & Orchestra
BBC Co-Commission and World Premiere

Terence Blanchard
Suite from ‘Fire Shut Up in My Bones’

Erich Wolfgang Korngold
The Sea Hawk

Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 ‘In Concert’ on 29 April 2026

About the Work

Bestia is a multi-movement concerto for trumpet and orchestra. Inspired by John Henry Fleming’s modern-day bestiary Fearsome Creatures of Florida, it inhabits a world where real and imagined creatures coexist, many transformed by their environments and by human interference, the solo trumpet cast as its central shape-shifting protagonist.

The opening movement centres on the Storm Devils: suburban creatures that appear ordinary until lightning storms transform them into boisterous, destructive beasts. Flitting, scurrying textures and lyrical trumpet lines give way to music of mounting force. The second movement features the piccolo trumpet in a tribute to Gordo, the squirrel monkey launched into space from Cape Canaveral in 1958, whose capsule was never recovered. Chattering figures emerge from surging orchestral swells before softening into a haunting, elegiac close.

The third movement erupts in pummelling, gnashing exchanges, the trumpet driving a volatile orchestral landscape reflecting the vicious creatures hardened by the industrial hazards of Florida’s citrus groves. The finale turns to Gilda, an escaped circus elephant whose fleeting appearance gradually passes into memory and myth. As certainty gives way to ambiguity, the concerto dissolves into an ending of quiet mystery.