BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's 2024/25 season is its third with chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth will be directing Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and a new work by Helen Grime, along with playing the solo part in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17. There will be a further premiere from Ricardo Ferro, plus works by Donghoon Shin, Errollyn Wallen, Gabriela Montero and the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association Hans Abrahamsen. Ilan Volkov conducts percussion concertos with Scottish virtuoso Colin Currie, including a UK premiere by Olga Neuwirth and a concerto by Andy Aiko. Othe ..read more

Spitalfields Music Festival returns with events in iconic spaces across East London from 27 June to 10 July 2024. The festival opens with soprano Nardus Williams and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny in In the Shadow of the Tower, exploring East London's cosmopolitan history in a recital at St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. The concert features a new work by Roderick Williams, one of 14 premieres being presented at this year's festival. And we return to St Peter ad Vincula for Sing Joyfully: Tudor and Jacobean Music for the Chapel Royal performed by Choir of the Chapels Royal ..read more

An urban myth tells of how, one evening, Stalin made a surprise phone call to Radio Moscow demanding the urgent delivery of a record: a Mozart piano concerto played by Maria Yudina. Unfortunately, radio companies at this time did not always preserve their broadcasts for a future release or even for their own archive. But rather than say 'no' to Stalin, Radio Moscow gathered together Yudina and their orchestra in the middle of the night and made the recording from scratch, ready to be delivered to the Kremlin the following morning. In the version of the myth as told by Shostakovich, it was th ..read more

Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley - Charlotte Badham - New Sussex Opera Lampe & Carey: The Dragon of Wantley; Ana Beard Fernandez, Charlotte Badham, Magnus Walker, Robert Gildon, director: Paul Higgins, conductor: Toby Purser, Bellot Ensemble; New Sussex Opera at the Theatre Royal, Winchester Reviewed 28 April 2024 Updated to the 1980s miners' strike, New Sussex Opera's production mixes political satire and period style along with a sense of enjoyment in the work's send-up of opera seria British theatre always seems to have been fond of music, Purcell's semi-operas were the musical spe ..read more

Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Hensel, 1847 Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 2 'Lobesgesang'; Lucy Crowe, Hilary Cronin, Nick Pritchard, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Choir of the Enlightenment, Sir Andras Schiff; Queen Elizabeth Hall Reviewed 26 April 2024 A near ideal performance of the violin concerto followed by an account of Mendelssohn's great symphony-cantata that never compromised the work's idiosyncrasy yet brought out its rich detail and emotionalism Sir Andras Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) have been celebrating Mendel ..read more

Brindley Sherratt (Photo: Gerard Collett) I first chatted with bass Brindley Sherratt in early 2020 about a fundraising gala he was organising. Much happened afterwards, and the interview did not appear on the blog until 2022 [see my interview]. When we chatted then, Brindley was moving into singing larger, more dramatic roles including Wagner. But when we met again recently it was to talk about a project on an entirely different scale, Brindley's first recital disc, with pianist Julius Drake, Fear No More on the Delphian label. A disc that features music by Schubert, Richard Strauss ..read more

Schütz: A German in Venice - Schütz, Monteverdi, Rossi, Grandi, Cavalli, Sances; David de Winter, The Brook Street Band, FHR; Reviewed 24 April 2024 A wonderfully engaging and life-affirming disc which mixed Schütz's music with pieces he might have heard whilst he was in Venice in the 1620s Heinrich Schütz had a huge life, born in 1585, the year that Thomas Tallis died and with Palestrina, Victoria and Guerrero still at the peak of their powers, he died in 1672 not long before the births of Telemann, Bach and Handel. His life encompassed the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), work in Dresden and ..read more

Summer at Snape, Britten Pears Arts' series of events at Snape returns for 2024 with 50 events from 26 July to 31 August.  Visiting orchestras include John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London in Britten and Walton, Simon Over and Southbank Sinfonia in Brahms and Rachmaninoff, Peter Whelan and Irish Baroque Orchestra in a programme of Baroque classics, Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra in Elgar and Sibelius, and BBC Concert Orchestra presenting Friday Night is Music Night.  Visiting artists include violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist Cédric Tiberghien in Beethoven ..read more

The 13th Lewes Chamber Music Festival takes place from 6 to 8 June 2024 with artistic director Beatrice Philips bringing together 18 of today's most exciting chamber-musicians and soloists to explore the musical ties between Europe and America through celebrating the 150th birthdays of Arnold Schoenberg and Charles Ives, including Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1 and Ode to Napoleon with actor Samuel West, and rare chamber versions of larger scale works by Richard Strauss and Mahler. The weekend opens with early piano quartets by Mahler and Richard Strauss along with music by Ell ..read more

The Paradox Orchestra (Photo: Elizabeth Brown) The Yorkshire-based Paradox Orchestra, whose founder Michael Sluman I chatted to recently [see my interview 'No boundaries or rules'], is presenting a series of concerts for charitable causes across Yorkshire, including two upcoming concerts in aid of the homeless in Sheffield in the magnificent setting of Sheffield Cathedral.  The orchestra will perform its 50 Years of Pink Floyd programme at the cathedral on 16 May and their Fleetwood Mac programme on 12 July. The concerts will raise funds and awareness for the Cathedral's Arc ..read more