BBCSO/Nicholls/Volkov review – soaring new work is timeless and timely

Barbican, London
Rachel Nicholls delivered a gleaming performance in Nicole LeFanu’s fiery new concertante, in an inspired programme including Schreker and RachmaninovNicola LeFanu’s new work, The Crimson Bird, an RPS Elgar bursary commission, feels at once timeless and urgently up to date. A mother sings of feeding her baby, and of a siege. So far, so Trojan. But John Fuller’s text turns us away from mythical times and towards the present. A house sliced open, children dead in