Extraordinary musicians. A remarkable place: 2027 season at the 11th century St Hubert's Church

11th century St Hubert's Church stands alone in a field in Hampshire on the South Downs near Rowlands Castle.  Inside are nationally important medieval wall paintings. Outside, the Idsworth valley around it is beautiful.

In 2026, the church created St Hubert's Music to present concerts at the church, bringing exceptional musicians to one of Hampshire’s most extraordinary little churches. The results exceeded anything they could have imagined. Now, under honorary president Jonathan Willocks, St Hubert's Music has announced its 2027 season under the title Extraordinary musicians. A remarkable place.

The nine concerts confirm their commitment to supporting emerging musical talent through a partnership with the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. The 2027 season begins in April with New Arts Opera, and then continues with Cuban guitar duo Ahmed Dickinson Cárdenas and Eduardo Martín.

Other performers during the year include the Hyde Quartet made up of musicians from the Royal Academy of Music, Quattro String Quartet making a return visit to the festival, and Korros Ensemble (flute, clarinet, harp). On period instruments there is the Zarek Trio (violin, viola da gamba, harpsichord),  and Ensemble Hesperi (recorder, baroque violin, baroque cello, harpsichord).

Pianist Hannah Watson Emmrich makes her debut a the festival, and Jonathan Willcocks directs musicians from Southern Pro Music in a concert at St Hubert's sister church, St Michael and All Angels, Chalton.

Full details from St Hubert's website.

Plans for 2027 East Neuk Festival announced, artistic director Svend McEwan-Brown's last

Stockhausen's Donnerstags-Abschied at the 2026 East Neuk Festival [Photo: Neil Hanna]

Next year's East Neuk Festival (ENF), which runs from 30 June to 4 July 2027, will be Svend McEwan-Brown's last as artistic director as he steps down after 23 years. Svend McEwan-Brown has been instrumental in shaping the festival’s 5-day programme of music since it began and the 2027 festival sees a number of favourite performers returning including Elisabeth Leonskaja, Elias Quartet, Pavel Haas Quartet, and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra who have performed at every festival since the beginning.

There will be a festival debut for Swedish nyckelharpist Erik Rydvall. The nyckelharpa is a Swedish keyed fiddle (with some similarities to the hurdy gurdy) which has been coming into prominence in both classical and folk music since the early 20th century (the 1995 Eurovision Song Contest winner used the instrument, and  English composer Natalie Holt used nyckelharpa for background score of the Disney+ series Loki). The other festival debutant is the vocal ensemble The Marian Consort.

Svend McEwan-Brown in Anstruther
at the 2025 East Neuk Festival

Svend McEwan-Brown, Artistic Director said: "Not many people are so lucky as to get to co-found and direct a festival and be given so free a hand with it. It has been a life-changing pleasure, and I count my blessings: I thank Donald and Louise MacDonald, the wonderful ENF team and audience, and of course, the many performers who have given us all so many great memories. After 23 years at the helm, I also think that it is time now for someone else to be given the chance to bring all of their imagination and a fresh take on the possibilities ENF offers. I look forward to seeing who takes over and where they go with this lovely event."

ENF was the idea of Donald (ENF President) and Louise MacDonald who co-founded it with Svend McEwan-Brown in 2004. It exists because of their belief in the joy and power of live music and its potential to transform lives and life. 

In any given year, their smallest project might be a concert in a tiny space for 30 people. Their biggest project to date was 2016’s Memorial Ground. Commissioned from David Lang, Memorial Ground is a work for amateur and professional singers, a choral commemoration of the centenary of the Battle of the Somme. This UK-wide commission which involved thousands of people throughout the UK and nearby Europe. 

Since 2015, the ENF Retreat has offered exceptional young musicians a matchless opportunity to spend time with outstanding world-class players, to learn both specific repertoire and also more general aspects of musical wisdom that will influence their work for years to come. Or to work on a project of special importance to them

Read more at the festival's website.

The Song Within: Leeds Song Festival returns in April 2027 with a programme expanding the boundaries of the song recital

Audience at Leeds Song Festival 2025 [Photo: Tom Arber]

Leeds Song Festival returns in April 2027 with a week of song from 10 to 17 April under the theme The Song Within, exploring what lies inside a song: memory, identity, poetry, place, connection and emotion, while bringing together artists, audiences and communities in unexpected way. The programmes range from early lute songs through the great Lied tradition to more unusual repertoire including Hildegard of Bingen, Egyptian song, Elizabeth Maconchy, Messiaen and beyond.

In partnership with South Asian Arts UK, sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun appears alongside vocalist Spoorthi Rao, while Degun and Errollyn Wallen meet for a conversation before Wallen performs her own music later that evening in the HAR Bar at Howard Assembly Room. 

The Festival continues its relationship with the Leeds International Piano Competition, celebrating the music of its Artistic Director, Sir Stephen Hough. Support by the Royal Philharmonic Society is bringing forth new repertoire including a song cycle by London-based Chilean composer Anibal Vidal.

Some events are more than a song recital. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, pianist Anna Tilbrook and illustrator James Mayhew combine song and live visual creativity, while soprano Carolyn Sampson's Star Falling, created with tenor and visual artist Andrew Staples and pianist Joseph Middleton, explores an immersive multimedia approach to performance and includes a world premiere by Roderick Williams.

Local poets and composers continue to be brought together in the Festival's A Leeds Songbook project, and this year visual artists respond to the new material by producing work that reflects the themes explored. There will be a Bring and Sing! mass performance of Mozart's Requiem, encouraging audience members to become performers.

The Festival's Young Artists Programme will feature masterclasses led by  Sir Simon Keenlyside, Roger Vignoles, Kate Royal, Christiane Karg, Mark Padmore, Audrey Hyland and Christoph Prégardien,

Full details from the Leeds Song website.

Charm & youthful engagement: Ellen Pearson & Laurence Kilsby join Nigel Foster to open the 2026 London Song Festival

Ellen Pearson, Nigel Foster, Laurence Kilsby [Photo: c/o Nigel Foster]

Reaching Out to a Distant Lover: Schubert, Chaminade, Faure, Menotti, Mahler, Duparc, Bridge, Wolf, Roussel, Amy Beach, John Ireland, Korngold, Strauss, Ernest Charles, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, and Rodgers & Hammerstein; Ellen Pearson, Laurence Kilsby, Nigel Foster; London Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed 5 November 2026

Two young singers join Nigel Foster to open the London Song Festival with an engagingly eclectic mix of songs in performances mixing charm and youthful engagement with touching moments

Nigel Foster opened his 2026 season of the London Song Festival with a concert inspired by the 150th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell being granted a patent for the telephone. At Hinde Street Methodist Church on 5 November 2026, mezzo-soprano Ellen Pearson [whom we saw earlier this year in Elena Langer's Four Sisters at Covent Garden, see my review] and tenor Laurence Kilsby [last seen in Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn & strings with Ben Goldscheider, see my review] joined Foster for a programme of songs under the theme of 'Reaching Out to a Distant Lover'. Yes, we had ABBA's Ring, Ring, but Foster's eclectic mix of material also included Schubert, Chaminade, Faure, Menotti, Mahler, Duparc, Bridge, Wolf, Roussel, Amy Beach, John Ireland, Korngold, Strauss, Ernest Charles, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, and Rodgers & Hammerstein.

The programme took us through a wide variety of distance, both physical and metaphorical. Rather bravely and imaginatively, 'A message to the Distant Beloved' avoided Beethoven and concentrated on Schubert. Laurence Kilsby brought out the lyric beauty of 'Liebesbotschaft' from Schubert's Schwanenegesang, with charm and a sense of inner passion. Pearson used her richly vibrant voice to create a sense of urgency in an engaging account of Schubert's Suleika I ending on a quietly touching moment. Kilsby then returned to Schwanengesang with 'Die Taubenpost', combining beauty of line and tone with attention to the words. This was a youthfully engaging account of the song, ending in a touching manner.

La sonnambula: John Wilkie's intelligent chamber account of Bellini's opera for HGO benefitted from a glorious title role from Eyra Norman

Bellini: La sonnambula (Act Two finale) - HGO [Photo: Julian Guidera]

Bellini: La sonnambula; Eyra Norman, Hailey West, Mathilda Goike, Tobias Compos Santinaque, Michael Roche, dir: John Wilkie, cond: Stefano Boccacci, HGO; Jacksons Lane Theatre
Reviewed 7 November 2026

Daring to go where few companies do, HGO's version of La sonnambula is brought to life by a glorious account of the title role alongside a finely supportive cast and John Wilkie's highly intelligent chamber production

Bellini's La sonnambula has its origins in a ballet performed in Paris in 1827 (scenario by Eugène Scribe, music by Ferdinand Hérold) at a time when somnambulism was all the rage on the Parisian stage. In 1831, Bellini having discarded plans for an opera based on Victor Hugo's Hernani (which Verdi would set in 1844) lighted upon La sonnambula. Its full title is La sonnambula, ossia I Due Fidanzati svezzeri (The Sleepwalker, or The Two Swiss Betrothed), with the subtitle moving the focus onto the betrothed, whereas in the original ballet the title was The Sleepwalker, or The Arrival of a New Lord, placing the character that became Rodolfo more at the centre of the action. In fact, Felice Romani's libretto for Bellini seems to lose interest in Rodolfo after Act One, he starts as a mysterious figure but then become stock. There is much by play with the fact that Amina reminds Rodolfo of someone he once knew, tantalising us with a revelation that never comes. In fact, there are other loose strands in the plot, why does Amina have a step-mother rather than a mother? [see Note below]

The poet Felice Romani was notorious for missing deadlines and his focus was always on situations exploring the extreme emotions of the characters, something that Bellini was interested in. What seemed to matter less to the two was how the characters got into those situations. Their operas (and many of Donizetti's at the same period) required the heroines to be badly treated, misbelieved or traduced, thus leading them into extremes of emotion.

Bellini's La sonnambula is an opera that requires substantial suspension of disbelief, it is not an opera you go to for satisfying dramatic theatre. The Swiss pastoral setting and the credulity of the villagers is essential to the logistics of the plot yet Bellini and Romani do little to flesh out the details. The opera also requires a soprano who is able to identify with her heroine both dramatically and musically.

Bellini: La sonnambula - Tobias Campos Santinaque, Eyra Norman - HGO [Photo: Julian Guidera]

As such the work would perhaps seem rather a stretch for a small opera company, yet HGO (Hamstead Garden Opera) bravely went where few dare [Buxton performed La sonnambula in 2023. Before that Covent Garden gave it in 2011, reviving a production from 2002, with the previous 1960 production last being revived in 1981]. Not only that but HGO managed to assemble two extremely fine casts. True Verdi voices might be in short supply still, but clearly Italian bel canto and Baroque are thriving).

We caught the first performance by the alternative cast at Jacksons Lane on Saturday 7 November 2026. The production was directed by John Wilkie and conducted by Stefano Boccacci, with designs by Jennifer Gregory and lighting by Jacob Gowler. Eyra Norman was Amina, Hailey West was Lisa, Mathilda Goike was Teresa, Tobias Campos Santinaque was Elvino, Michael Roche was Rodolfo, and Ted Day was Alessio. There was a chorus of 12 and an orchestra made up of single strings, woodwind, and trumpet, plus two horns, and percussion.

To capture the fullness of what choral singing is: composer Nathan James Dearden on his debut album, i breathe

Nathan James Dearden in rehearsal with the National Youth Choir of Wales [Photo: Evan Dawson]

Composer and conductor Nathan James Dearden's debut album, i breathe, is out this month on Signum Classics. The album features choral music by Nathan performed by Choir of Royal Holloway, Kantos Chamber Choir and National Youth Choir of Wales, conducted by Rupert Gough [who I interviewed back in 2021], Ellie Slorach and Tim Rhys-Evans, alongside cellist Maxim Calver. Nathan describes the album as a personal collection and its themes draw on his Welsh identity, post-industrial landscape, memory and belonging.

Ideas for the album arose because he has had all sorts of fruitful collaborations with different choral groups yet no album. The idea for i breathe was that it would form a series of postcards of his different collaborations, representing ten years of friendships from the National Youth Choir of Wales (in which Nathan sang as a teenager) to professional choirs such as Kantos Chamber Choir to the Choir of Royal Holloway where Nathan is Composer-in-Residence.

The oldest music on the disc dates from some ten years ago and the remaining pieces are more recent. Nathan's Three Motets (from 2024) were written for the Choir of Royal Holloway, whilst Morals + Interludes (from 2020) was created in collaboration with the singers of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship during the pandemic, completed during a residency at The Red House, Aldeburgh, the piece comprises five short choral ‘postcards’, each inspired by virtual memories drawn from the participants’ own lives, drawing on new ways of collective expression. Everything about us (from 2022) was written for the the National Youth Choir of Wales. Inspired by the young voices making music together, the piece developed out of workshops where the young singers came up with their own texts.

Simplicity writ large: Iphigénie en Tauride makes an impact at English National Opera without impeding the glories of Gluck's music

Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride - Nick Pritchard, Jacques Imbrailo, Christine Rice - English National Opera, 2026 [Photo: Helen Murray]

Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride; Christine Rice, Jacques Imbrailo, Nick Pritchard, Morgan Pearse, dir: Lyndsey Turner, cond: David Bates, English National Opera; London Coliseum
Reviewed 6 November 2026

Supple vocal lines, powerful suppressed emotions & modern classical style: Lyndsey Turner's production of Gluck's final masterpiece is never overdone and allows the principals to shine

English National Opera's current season has something of an uncompromising, contemporary streak to it, what with Du Yun's Angel's Bone dividing critics [see our review], and a new Tosca (review to come next week) paired with Kaija Saariaho's challenging Adriana Mater (to come later this month). 

So it was with some trepidation that we went along to see the premiere of English National Opera's first ever production of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at the London Coliseum on 6 November 2026, directed by Lyndsey Turner, a director best known for her theatre work but who directed Noyes Fludde in 2019 for ENO at Stratford East. David Bates conducted (making his ENO debut) with Christine Rice as Iphigénie, Jacques Imbrailo as Oreste, Nick Pritchard as Pylade and Morgan Pearse as Thoas. Designs were by Soutra Gilmore with lighting by Tim Mitchell.

The work was performed in its original French, which undoubtedly helped the fluidity of the singers vocal lines but few managed to get the words across in the London Coliseum (we were sitting at the rear of the stalls).

Gluck: Iphigénie en Tauride - Christine Rice - English National Opera, 2026 [Photo: Helen Murray]

Thankfully Turner and Gilmore had not tried to do anything with the opera, there was no attempt at creative dislocation. Gilmore's setting was abstract, relying mainly on Mitchell's lighting (at the first night there was a problem and Morgan Pearse had to re-start Thoas's first aria and perform much of it in gloom). The costumes for the women were classically styled and draped whilst the men were in contemporary dress, though this contemporary element was not pressed. Turner introduced elements of the daily life of the priestesses (sweeping, washing etc.). There was no choreographer and no danced element. The biggest innovation was that during Oreste's Act One vision the Furies were off-stage and we saw two children playing the youthful Iphigénie and Oreste, and these two reoccurred to trouble Pylade in Act Three.

Soprano Roberta Philip on cat-walking for London Fashion Week, learning from models, and her upcoming recital at the London Festival of American Music

Roberta Philip [Photo: Ben Reason]

Soprano Roberta Philip is a versatile performer working across opera and jazz idioms in settings ranging from the cat walk to the concert platform. She is passionate about bringing lesser-known works by African American composers into the spotlight and has been praised for her "powerfully expressive" (The Opera Critic) and "outstanding voice" (The Stage).

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse on 11 November 2026.

What inspired you to become an Opera singer?

I grew up in a naturally musical family. My family would often burst into song at home, and my Nana, who is now 99, is infamous for having a hymn for every situation - big or small. My parents didn’t have the opportunity to learn instruments themselves, so they made sure my siblings and I did. I studied classical piano and violin, but singing initially remained something I did for fun, whether that was singing pop and R&B at home, musical theatre groups or singing in small jazz bands and choirs.

It was actually at the University of Birmingham that I began to see singing as something more. I auditioned for the Birmingham University Singers Chamber Choir, led by Simon Halsey, singing ‘Memory’ from Cats (one of the only remotely “classical” pieces I knew). I was accepted and went on to sing with the choir throughout the year. Through Halsey’s involvement with the BBC Proms Youth Choir, I also found myself singing in the chorus of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius at my first BBC Proms.

Watching Roderick Williams, one of the soloists, sing with the orchestra at our first Royal Albert Hall rehearsal gave me chills. He was the first Black opera singer I had ever seen, and I remember thinking that this was what I wanted to do. The following year, the chamber choir audition panel encouraged me to take singing lessons, recognising my innate musicality. By the time I graduated, singing had become my principal study.

When I graduated, I began a full-time career in performing arts PR and had private singing lessons, sung with the London Symphony Chorus and used all my annual leave to do summer vocal development programmes.

A few years later, I went on to train at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where I completed my Master of Performance. My teacher, John Evans, was instrumental in transforming my voice and helping me recognise my versatility across genres as one of my greatest artistic strengths, showing me how it could inform and enrich my classical singing. Although my training has been rooted in classical music, my love of jazz and soul remains a fundamental part of who I am musically, and continues to influence the way that I approach performance.

In 2024 you performed at London Fashion Week. Are there parallels to be drawn between fashion and music?

In 2024, I was selected as one of a handful of Guildhall students to perform in British designer Patrick McDowell’s Orpheus Ball showcase for London Fashion Week. The collection explored the structures of orchestral music through fashion.

I performed Gershwin’s The Man I Love with my colleague Elizabeth Mwale on euphonium. We were the only musicians dressed in the collection, and we walked the catwalk whilst performing; a surprise twist within the show. I’m not a model, so it was a completely new experience, but I loved seeing how fashion and music could work together.

Through this show, I discovered a key parallel between opera and fashion. In opera, costume can be so much more than something you wear, it helps you inhabit a character and draws you into the narrative world. In the showcase, once wearing Patrick’s collection, I observed the very same transformation in the models, and experienced it myself.

You regularly collaborate with Pegasus Opera Company. What impact has this company had on your development as an artist?

Pegasus Opera Company has played a pivotal role in my development. I joined its mentoring programme in 2023–24, and had several opportunities to perform for industry professionals and connect with key organisations.

Pegasus also cast me in my first professional opera production, Ruth by Philip Hagemann, where I played the Narrator and covered the lead role of Orpah. In fact, I ended up performing both my own role and the role I was covering in every performance, which was an extraordinary learning experience and a significant step in my professional development.

My relationship with Pegasus has continued beyond that production, and I regularly perform in concert tours. Alison Buchanan, Artistic Director, has also been a huge mentor to me. What I value particularly is the way Pegasus has helped create opportunities while encouraging a broader and more representative operatic landscape. That connects closely with my own interests as an artist.

Your recital programme for the London Festival of American Music features music by William Grant Still, Gershwin and Florence Price, amongst others. How have you gone about putting this together?

I’m thrilled to be making my London Festival of American Music debut with a programme that explores the extraordinary breadth and evolution of African American music. I want to celebrate the richness of this repertoire, bring lesser-known works into the spotlight, and share the many different stories and musical traditions it encompasses.

One composer I’m particularly excited to feature is Brittney Boykin. I was introduced to her work during my time at Guildhall, where I discovered her song cycle Moments in Sonder, which sets poetry by Maya Angelou, one of my favourite poets. I contacted Brittney over email, and I was incredibly grateful that Guildhall purchased the collection for me to include in my Master of Performance final recital. It’s wonderful to be able to continue sharing this music beyond my studies.

For me, my LFAM programme captures a vast musical landscape; from the soulful roots of spirituals, to music shaped by the civil rights movement and the struggle for equality, to songs of unencumbered joy, intimacy and love. I’m passionate about broadening the classical canon and encouraging audiences to discover composers and works they may not know. This recital is an opportunity to celebrate that diversity, whilst showing that African American music cannot be defined by a single style, period or experience.

Roberta performs with pianist Valentina Wang on 11 Nov 2026, 7.30pm at the London Festival of American Music at The Warehouse, Waterloo.

Florence Price: Night, Hold Fast to Dreams, Travel's End , Sympathy
Brittney Boykin: Moments in Sonder
George Gershwin: 'Summertime' from Porgy and Bess
Undine Smith Moore: I am in Doubt, I Want to Die while you Love Me, Lyric for True Love
​William Grant Still: 'Give me no Body without your Soul' from Blue Steel, Grief
Margaret Bonds: Three Dream Portraits
George Walker: I Got a Letter from Jesus, Ev'ry Time I Feel de Spirit
Moses Hogan: Were you There?
Hall Johnson: Ride on King Jesus

Joshua Weilerstein to be next chief conductor of BBC Philharmonic

Joshua Weilerstein conducting the BBC Philharmonic in Dvorak's New World Symphony in April 2026

Hot on the heels of John Storgårds, (chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic until September 2028), launching his first season as musical director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra [see my article] comes the news of the appointment of Joshua Weilerstein as the BBC Philharmonic's next chief conductor.

Weilerstein is music director of the Orchestre National de Lille, and will conclude his tenure as chief conductor of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2027/28 season. His relationship with the BBC Philharmonic has developed through performances in Manchester and at the BBC Proms. His 2025 BBC Proms appearance with the orchestra included clarinet concertos by Copland and Artie Shaw alongside French composer Elsa Barraine’s Second Symphony (which was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1938) and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. In April this year he conducted the orchestra in Manchester in a programme that included Duke Ellington’s Harlem, and Soviet Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin’s Fourth Piano Concerto (with Frank Dupree) alongside Dvorak.

Born in 1987 to a musical family, Joshua Weilerstein's father was the founding first violinist of the Cleveland Quartet.  Joshua Weilerstein studied violin and conducting at the New England Conservatory of Music, and his conducting mentors have included Hugh Wolff. Winning the First Prize (and Audience Prize) at the 2009 Malko Competition for Young Conductors in Copenhagen, he became the youngest first prize winner in the history of the competition. He launched the Sticky Notes podcast in 2017.

It demands to be heard: the CBSO return to Coventry Cathedral with Britten's War Requiem for Remembrance Day in advance of a European tour

Coventry Cathedral [Photo: Garry Jones]

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is set to return to Coventry Cathedral for a performance of Britten’s War Requiem on Remembrance Day (11 November), also marking 50 years since Britten's death. 

The CBSO gave the world premiere of the War Requiem at the Cathedral in 1962. The work was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, and the reconsecration marked by an arts festival that also included the premiere of Michael Tippett's King Priam, and Bliss's The Beatitudes (which had to be premiered in the Belgrade Theatre because of scheduling problems relating to the opening services and rehearsals for the War Requiem).

For the Remembrance Day performance, the CBSO's music director, Kazuki Yamada conducts the orchestra, CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Choir and Trinity Boys Choir with soloists Olga Peretyatko, Andrew Staples, and Christian Gerhaher.

Following the Coventry concert, Kazuki Yamada and the orchestra will give performances of the War Requiem in Brussels, Luxembourg and Lucerne as part of a European tour which includes concerts in Freiburg, Nuremberg, and Viersen (which is near Düsseldorf). Rather strikingly the CBSO Chorus and Trinity Boys Choir also taking part in the performances of the War Requiem on the tour.

CBSO Chief Executive Emma Stenning said: "War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. It is, as Britten intended, a reflection on war and a cry for peace, and in many ways could not be more prescient, or more urgently needed from an orchestra right now. We are not staging it as an act of nostalgia. We are staging it because it demands to be heard."

Full details from the CBSO website.

The songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent: Erik Sigurd's Sonnet live in Stoke Newington

"There was a time when you could sit in silence without reaching for your phone, when you looked forward to long car rides for the space to think, when you would listen to an album from start to finish. We find the songs that make ordinary moments feel transcendent."

This comes from the manifesto of Silent Songs, an independent record label, publisher and curator. And whilst their name might seem something of a tautology, in fact they focus on contemporary classical and ambient music, and in creating carefully curated live experiences around their artists.

One of these is the British-Swedish composer Erik Sigurd, whose piano music is described at 'soft and cinematic'. Sigurd has his debut album, Sonnet out on 12 November and to celebrate that, Silent Songs has gathered Sigurd and friends together for a concert at the Old church, Soke Newington on 13 November 2026.

In the first half, Sigurd will play his own solo piano music alongside music by key pianistic influences. In the second half he will be joined by string quartet - Eleonora Consta, Roman Lytwyniw, Luba Tunnicliffe, Zachary Owen, saxophonist Kaidi Akinnibi, double bass Sam Becker and harpist Oliver Wass, for Sonnet, Sigurd's 14 movement chamber work.

In fact Erik Sigurd is the pseudonym that jazz and classical composer/pianist Leif Kaner-Lidström uses for recording meditative, often improvised solo works. You can also catch Kaner-Lidström performing with his own quintet, the Levitation Orchestra and the Jess Gillam band.

Further details from dice.

Innovative repertoire, worthy winners & talent development: looking back at the final of BBC Young Musician

BBC Young Musician final, 20206 - Sofia Demetriades [Photo: BBC / Betsan Evans]

It was heartening to hear three such talented young people in the BBC Young Musician 2026 final and to experience such imaginatively varied repertoire. Whilst the winner, violinist Sofia Demetriades played Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto and impressed both audience and judges, recorder player Alma Nunez Debretzeni played Graham Fitkin's Recorder Concerto and saxophonist Kezia Colton played Takashi Yoshimatsu's Cyber Bird Saxophone Concerto. All three accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Alpesh Chauhan at Bristol Beacon.

I was very much taken with Graham Fitkin's Recorder Concerto, a work I did not know before. This was originally commissioned by Debretzeni’s teacher, Barbara Law, and it was given its premiere performance in 2017 by 2014’s Young Musician finalist, Sophie Westbrooke. Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu's influences range from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky through to Pink Floyd, Yes, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. His concerto for alto saxophone dates from 1993 with a title that refers to 'an imaginary bird in the realm of electronic cyberspace' and it was written for virtuoso saxophonist, Nobuya Sugawa. At Bristol Beacon, the Competition's 2022 winner, the percussionist Jordan Ashman, joined Kezia Colton onstage for Yoshimatsu’s concerto.

BBC Young Musician final, 20206 - Alma Nunez Debretzeni [Photo: BBC / Betsan Evans]

Violinist Sofia Demetriades has already been making waves. In March, she won the senior category of the Haslemere International String Competition with a prize including concerto performance engagement with the English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) at the Haslemere Festival. Continuing the ECO connection, Demetriades will be ECO's inaugural New Horizons Artist Sofia Demetriades. New Horizons is the English Chamber Orchestra’s flagship talent development programme which is being launched next year. The programme will identify exceptional emerging musicians and composers and support them through a sustained two-year pathway from education into professional life.

The BBC Young Musician final 2026 is on BBC iPlayer.

Complexity & beauty: soprano Paula Sides & pianist Sergey Rybin explore songs on the cusp of Modernism & Romanticism in Of Love & Transience

Of Love & Transience: Berg, Ullmann, Korngold, Strauss; Paula Sides, Sergey Rybin; VOCES8 Records
Reviewed 2 November 2026

Viktor Ullmann's settings of Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated by Rilke provide the powerful centrepiece in a recital that explores songs on the cusp of Modernism and Romanticism with performances that mine both the songs complexity and beauty

It's not obvious that the early 20th century would provide such richness in the song repertoire, particularly in the Austro-German tradition. Yet song-writing seems to have constantly drawn composers and exploring those on the cusp of modernism and romanticism can prove richly rewarding.

On this new disc from soprano Paula Sides and pianist Sergey Rybin, Of Love and Transience on the VOCES8 Records, they explore the songs of Alban Berg and Richard Strauss alongside those of Viktor Ullmann and Erich Korngold. The recital is bookended by Berg's Seven Early Songs and Strauss's Four Last Songs, but the lesser-known gems by Ullmann and Korngold prove to be equally rewarding.

Music made with & by people, where they live & work, is what keeps orchestral music alive & relevant: Orchestras Live's 2026 Impact Review

Orchestras Live: Culture Sounds [Photo: Chiara Dellerba]

Orchestras Live is the charity that works to bring the thrill and connection of live orchestral music to people who might not otherwise encounter it, and to use those shared experiences to spark confidence, wellbeing and a sense of belonging in both the individuals and communities. It has recently released its 2026 Impact Report, which makes for illuminating reading.

They work nationally with a focus in the East, North and the Midlands, often in coastal and rural communities where access to high-quality music experiences are often limited. The report covers some 35 projects and events, working with 37 local partners and 19 orchestral partners to create over 26,000 orchestral experiences.

Key projects include:

Our Music Our Way: providing first time experiences for children and young people, helping put music at the heart of communities in Redcar and Cleveland, with young children hearing an orchestra for the first time alongside residents co-writing and performing with professional musicians. 

This involved an ongoing schools programme with Royal Northern Sinfonia, composer Michael Betteridge and teachers from Tees Valley Music Services.

Culture Sounds: trauma-informed creative opportunities for displaced children and young people in the UK care system, deepening understanding of how creative work can support belonging and confidence. 

Musicians from One World Orchestra and Sinfonia Viva delivered workshops at a young people's residence in Leicester, working with local support workers. One World Orchestra has now secured funding to launch a full programme next year.

Good Company: creative dementia support for family carers and their relatives in Essex, helping them stay connected, independent and creatively engaged. Building on this, a new iteration will be delivered in Rayleigh, building on a legacy project established there by Dance Network Association.

Day of Psalms curated by Edmund de Waal at Schwarzman Centre, Oxford culminates in Aurora Orchestra premiering Frideswides Psalms by Nico Muhly

St Frideswide in 14th century stained glass at Christ Church, Oxford [Photo: Wikimedia/Andrew Dunning]

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre is the University of Oxford's new centre for the arts and humanities. The Hopkins Architects-designed buildings house seven of the University's humanities faculties whilst the public performance spaces include a concert hall, studio theatre, and black box performance space.

As an example of the sort of cross-cultural fertilisation that we might expect, artist and writer Edmund de Waal is a Schwarzman Centre Cultural Fellow. He was been working with academics on exploring the continuing resonance of the Psalms across the three Abrahamic faiths and beyond. The culmination of this work is a Day of Psalms at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November which includes a sunrise concert from GBSR Duo (piano and percussion), the Colin Currie Group in Steve Reich's Tehilim, and all manner of events exploring the psalms relevance from John Donne to writing workshops.

The evening concert will feature Nicholas Collon, Aurora Orchestra, the BBC Singers in a programme co-curated by Edmund de Waal. The concert features Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms (a work that celebrates Bernstein's Jewish heritage with music worthy of Broadway), and Bach's Magnificat (not strictly a Psalm but reflecting the Lutheran tradition), plus a new work by Nico Muhly.

Muhly's Frideswide Psalms has been co-commissioned by Aurora Orchestra and the Schwarzman Centre. Frideswide was an Anglo-Saxon princess, who become the patron saint of Oxford and the University of Oxford. She is credited as the founder of an Oxford monastery which became part of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. Muhly's new piece involves 'several interwoven psalms, whose imagery circles the life of the early medieval Saint Frideswide' with texts both from the Book of Common Prayer and the 14th century Wycliffe translation.

There are three opportunities to catch the programme, at Saffron Hall on 27 November, at the Schwarzman Centre on 28 November and at Kings Place, London on 29 November.

Further information about the Day of Psalms from the Schwarzman Centre website, and see Aurora Orchestra's website for details of their concerts. 

String instruments, they’ve been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember.

Rachael Montesino Young (Photo: Stuart Wood)

Cellist Rachael Montesino Young on the influence of Jacqueline du Pré, both of whom studied with William Pleeth, and looking forward to her concerts with London Virtuosi Ensemble.

[see Robert's 2015 interview with her, 'From ritual humiliation to meditation']

String instruments, they've been at the centre of my musical life for as long as I can remember. Whether it's the soulful, human sound of the cello – my own instrument, the thrill of a virtuoso violin, the sobering and heart-warming viola or the plangent tones of a viol. Whether played as a solo instrument, as a choir of strings in a string orchestra, or the sound of the collective string sections of a great orchestra, the alchemy of string instruments in whatever form, are somehow able to express the whole range of human experience and emotion and even beyond, reaching out and hinting at other worlds beyond ours.

And in the hands of a great artist such as Jacqueline du pre, the possibilities are for expression are truly without limits. She was one who was able to create an endless possibility of colours – pale and limpid, fierce and heroic, wondrous, tender, melting, heartbreaking, romantic, heart-warming, ennobling and on and on. And for me more than any other string player I've heard, she was the supreme artist for this.

So, it's unsurprising that all my recent projects –both upcoming and newly minted, have strings at their beating creative heart. My just recently completed a cello album called The Bearable Lightness of Being collaborates with the pianist Sophia Rahman and is dedicated to my cello heroine Jacqueline du Pre.

I was very fortunate to have shared the same cello teacher as du Pre, in the late, great William "Bill" Pleeth, and so have first-hand experience of the teaching and some of the qualities Bill would have focused on developing in du Pre's playing. She was of course her own greatest teacher, as all great artists are, but it took someone of Pleeth's artistry, imagination and approach to the cello, to develop her genius to its full fruition.

The Bearable Lightness of Being takes as its inspiration du Pre's 'Recital' recording - with a few additional surprises along the way and is due for release in January 2027.

But my upcoming orchestral projects in London involve a slightly bigger beast than a cello as they are collaborations with the London Virtuosi Ensemble – LoVE.

LoVE is a string orchestra ensemble I recently founded, with an aim to continue and foster the rich and great traditions of English string playing.

I grew up listening avidly to recordings of the great chamber orchestras active in London in the 1960's,70s and 80s. Ensembles such as The English Chamber Orchestra – at that time led by the wonderful Emanuel (Manny) Hurwitz, The Academy of St Martin's in the Field – founded and led by Sir Neville Marriner and the many wonderful recordings made by string quartets - the top of my list for me being The Amadeus Quartet but there were many more.

LoVE also takes as inspiration the supreme technique and impressive ensemble playing of Russian virtuosi string orchestras from the 1960s and 70s such as The Moscow Virtuosi.

A Terrible Beauty, LoVE's debut concert is on December 1st is part of the Temple Church's, London Winter Music Festival and is a journey through pre-war, 20th century English String Music and verse written between 1900 –1939.

And It's a great honour for us all to be performing alongside two eminent and supreme actors – Dame Harriet Smith and Toby Jones, who will be performing the themed verse interspersed throughout the musical works on the programme.

The Artistic Director of the Temple Winter Festival Robert Ogden writes, "A Terrible Beauty explores the extraordinary flowering of English string music in the first decades of the twentieth century — music of radiant lyricism and haunting emotional depth, written in the shadow of a rapidly changing world. This programme brings together some of the most evocative and beloved works in the English string repertoire.

At its heart lies a profound sense of beauty touched by fragility. Composed between the final years of the Edwardian era and the uncertain decades between two world wars, these works reflect a society poised between nostalgia and modernity, serenity and upheaval. The soaring lines of Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis seem to suspend time itself, while the aching tenderness of Finzi's Romance and Elgar's Elegy speaks of loss, remembrance and longing. Frank Bridge's elegant Valse–Intermezzo captures the glittering surface of a vanished world, and Michael Tippett's exhilarating Concerto for Double String Orchestra bursts forth with rhythmic vitality, yet beneath its energy lies an undercurrent of tension and unease, hinting at the uncertainties and gathering shadows of a world on the brink of conflict.

From the sweeping grandeur of Elgar's Introduction & Allegro to the luminous spirituality of Vaughan Williams, this is music of extraordinary richness and emotional power - at once intimate and expansive, deeply English yet universal in its humanity.

A compelling and atmospheric evening of string music, A Terrible Beauty invites audiences into a sound world of warmth, passion and poignancy"

LoVE's second London December concert is at King's Place on December 18th. Again, it's an evening of classical music and poetry but this time curated and themed to take the audience on a journey through the winter solstice and the reflective introversion it can evoke.

I'm particularly looking forward to collaborating with the wonderful up and coming Estonian Violinist Hans Christian Aarvik who was winner of the Neilsen violin competition 2022. He is featuring as soloist in his compatriot Arvo Pärt's evocative work Fratres. As a fellow Estonian Hans brings a depth and subtlety of understanding to Pärts music, as I've witnessed many times when he has appeared as soloist with conductor Paavo Jarvi at Paavo's Parnu Music festival.

Hans Christian Aarvik will also feature as soloist in the rarely performed Souvenir d'un Lier Cher in an arrangement for string orchestra.

So, Fratres will set the atmosphere and mood for the evening and the evening will also include evocative music from Shostakovich and Sibelius and will conclude with one of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces, his Serenade for strings.

This serenade is a rich and highly colourful work that I like to think depicts the journey between autumn & spring – a winter's journey. From the encroaching darkness, we are led into the winter solstice and on through the slow return of light that heralds spring.

We begin with the sombre, sobering, autumnal beauty of a chorale reminiscent of Russian orthodox choirs and then on through to a winter ball of the second movement, with all its elegance, gaiety and gossip. We are then taken through to a deep, reflective and introverted Elegy – Tchaikovsky at his most richly expressive using the strings to their full sonorous power and possibility. And then on to the finale which begins by evoking a scene of a freezing winter morning on the icy Steppe. The music gradually reveals a frozen winter landscape, and then we might faintly begin to make out peasants slowly waking and readying themselves for work. What follows their toil is revelry, drinking and dancing and so onwards abruptly to return to the heart-warming, ennobling embrace of the sobering, sacred chorale of the opening. The peasants have the last word however as their gaiety gradually returns growing more insistent, driving on to a triumphant and exuberant end, heralding the return of spring and the light.

If these projects and concerts spark any interest, we'd LoVE to see you! But if you can't make either of them at this busy time of the year, we are planning our debut recording in March 2027, so maybe you can catch up with our work through this recording.

We will keep you posted .....

Love Rachael Montesino Young x

Samling Institute for Young Artists: Celebrating 30 years of transforming the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England

Samling Institute for Young Artists is celebrating its 30th birthday, that is 30 years of supporting early-career singers and pianists and through its innovative Samling Academy that has transformed the landscape for classical singers growing up in North East England. 

In celebration, on Friday 6 November there is a gala at Wigmore Hall when with alumni from Samling’s programmes and special guest Adrian Lester.

The concert illustrates the power of music to change lives, how composers and poets have harnessed the power of music to tell its own story. Music performed includes Franz Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, (with guest clarinettist Eliott Berdugo), Antonín Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs, Robert Schumann's Andersen Lieder and ends with one of the greatest love songs to art, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music in a special arrangement for eight solo voices.

Acting and a close attention to text are at the centre of Samling Institute’s teaching ethos and every programme includes a stage actor on the leadership team. Earlier this year, actor Adrian Lester, star of the RSC’s recent Cyrano de Bergerac, joined the Samling Artist Programme as a coach. Threading together the programme at Wigmore Hall, he will read poems by writers including Andrew Marvell, Walter de la Mare, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy.

The performers will include British soprano Nardus Williams, Portuguese mezzo-soprano Cláudia Ribas, Scottish tenor Euan McDonald, Swiss baritone Felix Gygli, American pianist Jonathan Ware, British pianist Alfred Fardell, and four recent members of Samling Academy, soprano Tia Radix-Callixte, mezzo- soprano Lauren Bagge, tenor Benedict Munden and baritone Fabian Tindale Geere.

Full details from the Samling website.

Here be monsters! Prologue Opera bring Jonathan Dove's community opera The Monster in the Maze to Hastings

Jonathan Dove's 2015 community opera, The Monster in The Maze was written for Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Following those 2015 UK performances the work had to wait until 2024 to be performed again, when Music in the Round presented it in Sheffield [see my review]. For that performance, tenor Anthony Flaum played Theseus and now Prologue Opera, which Flaum founded in 2017, is bringing the production, directed by Rosie Kat, to Hastings.

Anthony Flaum, CEO & Founder, Prologue Opera. commented: "Jonathan Dove gave Hastings its first community opera on the pier in 1990. Nearly four decades on, the town isn't just the venue, it's the story. Every wave, every backstory, every voice in this production comes from Hastings itself. This is what happens when a community gets to tell its own myth."

The Monster in the Maze will be presented at the White Rock Theatre, Hastings with three public performances during half-term on 18 and 19 February 2027. For the production, Prologue Opera will be partnered by the White Rock Theatre, Hasting Philharmonic, The Bright Foundation, Dear Future Films and Sussex music hub Create Music. 

The performances will combine professional soloists, conductor and creative team with White Rock Youth Theatre, children’s chorus from local schools, an adult community chorus, Hastings Philharmonic players and a Learning Orchestra of local young players and place-based elements to root the project in Hastings.

The Monster in the Maze: images from the project launch in Hastings

The performers will include Sir John Tomlinson as King Minos alongside mezzo-soprano Louise Winter, tenor Anthony Flaum (as Theseus) and Tim Nelson (as Daedalus). There will be puppetry from The Bright Foundation and Long Nose Puppetry.

Sir John Tomlinson added, "I have never before performed in a Jonathan Dove opera, but admired them greatly from the audience, so I look forward to being King Minos in 'Monster in the Maze'. The Monster I know well from the inside, having sung the title role in Birtwistle's 'Minotaur' at Covent Garden some years ago. Like all Myths, it's as relevant now in our own time as much as ever it was, and it's such a powerful, deeply emotional tale."

As well as working with local schools, there will be workshops with children to co-create a piece based around the myth and the themes in the show. 

Full details from the Prologue Opera website, tickets from the White Rock Theatre.

Forget Shakespeare: with Jacques Imbrailo & Haegee Lee as Hamlet & Ophélie, Chelsea Opera Group make a strong case for Ambroise Thomas's opera under Jonathon Cole-Swinard's sympathetic direction

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet - Malachy Frame, Ruari Bowen, Jacques Imbrailo, Jonathan Cole-Swinard, Jay Broadhurst, Grace Durham, Richard Wiegold, Thomas D Hopkinson, Chelsea Opera Group [Photo: Julian Guidera]

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet; Jacques Imbrailo, Haegee Lee, Richard Wiegold, Grace Durham, Jay Broadhurst, Chelsea Opera Group, Jonathan Cole-Swinard; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed 1 November 2026

Thomas's Hamlet might not be quite top-drawer grand opera, but with superb solo contributions and some sophisticate orchestral playing this performance played to the work's strengths

Ambroise Thomas is the nearly man of French 19th-century opera. Born seven years before Gounod and thirty years before Massenet, he was effectively the advance-guard of the composers who developed French opera following on from Meyerbeer. As director of the Conservatoire he was responsible for both modernising the organisation and imposing a conservative curriculum, including attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing the students. Thomas wrote a significant number of operas, many of them opera comique and his best known is Mignon (based loosely on Goethe) which began as an opera comique in 1866 though he went on to add sung recitatives and the work was almost as popular as Gounod's Faust.

The librettists for Mignon were Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, who also wrote the libretto for Gounod's Faust. And in 1859 they turned to Shakespeare's Hamlet to create an libretto for Thomas for a five-act grand opera. Their source was Alexandre Dumas's French version of the play from 1847, which was truer to Shakespeare than earlier French versions but still introduced 'improvements' so by modern standards, it was a rather free adaptation of the original. No Fortinbras and no opening scene on the ramparts; a love scene for Hamlet and Ophelia added to the first act; Claudius does not send Hamlet to England, so Rosencrantz and Guildenstern do not die; the rather striking ending has the ghost of Hamlet's father reappear and condemn Gertrude, Claudius, and Laertes as they are dying.

The opera was premiered at the Paris Opera in 1868. Hamlet was sung by the baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure because no suitable tenor could be found (though the tenor version was eventually premiered in 2025). The opera was staged, in Italian, in London in 1869 and went on to be staged in Leipzig, Budapest, Brussels, Prague, New York City, Saint Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna within five years of the Paris premiere. A shorter version of the Finale with Hamlet's death is associated with the London performances but there is no record that this version was performed in Thomas's lifetime. The role of Ophélie was a great favourite of Nelly Melba and reputedly when she sang the role, the opera ended with her mad scene!

In 1980, the fledgling Buxton Festival presented a production of Thomas' Hamlet (with Thomas Allen in the title role). Since then, sightings of the opera in the UK have been relatively rare. Covent Garden presented it in 2003, for the first time since 1910 (!) and Opera North gave it in 1995, but it remains a rarity, dependent on the right baritone and soprano. Buxton returned to the opera in 2025 in a production directed by Jack Furness [see my review].

It was thus heartening to find Chelsea Opera Group (COG) presenting the work at Cadogan Hall on Sunday 1 November 2026 (the same weekend as Gothic Opera unearthed another French rarity, Halévy's La Dame de Pique, see our review]. COG's conductor was Jonathon Cole-Swinard (Head of Music and Chorus Director at Garsington Opera). Jacques Imbrailo was Hamlet [following on from his Pelléas in Aldeburgh earlier this year, see our review, and anticipating his Oreste in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride at ENO] with Haegee Lee as Ophélie [last seen as Lakmé with COG in 2024, see my review]. Jay Broadhurst was Laërte [last seen with COG in Verdi's Macbeth last year when he sang Malcolm and jumped in as Macduff]. Richard Wiegold and Grace Durham were Claudius and Gertrude, with Ruari Bowen as Marcellus/Grave Digger, Malachy Frame as Horatio/Grave Digger, and Thomas D Hopkinson as the Ghost.

A gothic feast for the eyes with some very fine singing: Gothic Opera in the UK premiere of Halévy's La Dame de Pique

Halévy: La Dame de Pique - Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre [Photo: Craig Fuller]

Fromental Halévy: La Dame de Pique; Grace O’Malley, James Hutchings, Sam Utley, Charlie Epps, Alice Usher, director: Jonny Danciger, conductor: Hannah von Wiehler, arranger: Leon Haxby; Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre
Reviewed by Saskia Bibb, 29 October 2026

For this year’s Halloween production from Gothic Opera, we are in the last days of the Ancien régime to witness the havoc wreaked by a pact with the devil — a legend of a magic ring and the three secret cards that guarantee success at the gambling tables. 

Musically it is a triumph. Halévy’s opera lives up to its billing as an inexplicably neglected gem and the cast is a treasure trove of vocal talent. It is visually compelling: atmospheric sets, glorious costumes and clean, effective blocking. The drama falls down a little, with some clunky acting and the rather on-the-nose adapted dialogue.

We are first introduced to foreman of the miners, Andre Roskaw, played by Charlie Epps, and Lisanka, the governor’s daughter whom he aspires to marry if he can get enough money together, played by Alice Usher. Usher’s commanding, dramatic voice is put centre stage as she explains the Polowska family legend. In her interactions with other characters she is less convincing though, in particular her dialogue is rather stilted. Epps’s light, youthful baritone has a gentle and honest timbre that is a real gift to his characterisation of André, giving him an earthy, authentic quality. To start with his portrayal is naturalistic (his dialogue is impressively so given the rather crude material) but as the darkness within triumphs, Epps can see that only a healthy dose of melodrama will do. If you can’t pull out all the stops when driven mad by an ancient curse in a Halloween opera, then when can you?

Halévy: La Dame de Pique - Grace O'Malley, Charlie Epps - Gothic Opera at Battersea Arts Centre [Photo: Craig Fuller]