New concertos, more Mozart Made in Manchester, expanding Music in Mind: Manchester Camerata's new season

Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts Manchester Camerata (Photo: Anthony Robling)

Music director Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 with Caroline Pether plus music by Fanny Mendelssohn and Beethoven, and returns with Mozart, Made in Manchester, with soprano Ying Fang in arias by Mozart.

Daniel Pioro, one of Manchester Camerata’s artistic partners, will premiere a new violin concerto by Nick Martin. Inspired by the sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth, the piece will receive premier performances at Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester and The Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire, plus Kings Place in London. Composer and conductor, Jack Sheen conducts his own Hollow Propranolol Séance (II) alongside music by Ravel and Isabella Gellis at The University of Manchester and Wigmore Hall. Thomas Fetherstonhaugh conducts Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten in a programme with Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus.

Laurence Osborn’s horn concerto written for soloist Ben Goldscheider, commissioned by Trinity College, Cambridge will be premiered by Goldscheider in a concert conducted by Karel Deseure at The Stoller Hall with Manchester-based dance group Company Chameleon. The programme includes Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 “Haffner” which the orchestra will perform from memory whilst the musicians tell stories through movement and dance alongside Company Chameleon.

John Andrews conducts an all-British programme with music by William Alwyn, Doreen Carwithen and Elizabeth Maconchy with soloists violist Alex Mitchell, pianist Alexandra Dariescu and cor anglais player Rachael Clegg. John Andrews returns to conduct Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ monodrama, Eight Songs for a Mad King, directed by Ruth Knight with mezzo-soprano Idunnu Münch, at The Stoller Hall 

At Christmas there is Handel’s Messiah with Kantos Chamber Choir conducted by Laurence Cummings, plus  gospel celebration with the critically acclaimed vocal group and Camerata artistic partner, AMC Gospel Choir. The programme, Festive Happening, will be performed in Birmingham and Manchester. The orchestra will perform Sir James MacMillan’s Eleven at the National Football Museum conducted by Enyi Okpara in a programme centred around the theme of football. 

For five days in October, Manchester Camerata is crossing Greater Manchester in its festival called Here We Are. The orchestra will perform in chamber-group pop-ups across all 10 boroughs, meeting people where they are. 

In the 2025/26 season, the orchestra is expanding its Music in Mind programme. Twelve of its flagship Music Cafés for people living with dementia across are currently live with a further eight being introduced in autumn 2025, collaborating with local delivery partners in each Greater Manchester borough such as Age UK, Together Dementia Support and Lighthouse Project. Manchester Camerata welcomes all people living with dementia and their carers to take part in the Music Cafés. Their expansion follows a partnership with The University of Manchester of more than a decade and the launch of the UK’s first Centre of Excellence for Music and Dementia in Greater Manchester last year, hosted by Manchester Camerata.

The Camerata 360° Ruth Sutton Fellowship is also expanding. This supports musicians and composers based in Greater Manchester and the surrounding counties. The 2025/26 season sees the inclusion of wind, brass and string players under 30 with an undergraduate music degree or equivalent qualification. The fellowship trains young musicians and composers in their individual crafts, combating the increasing lack of such opportunities in the region, giving them hands-on work experience across the community, performance and creative aspects of Camerata’s work, preparing them for careers in an ever-changing sector.

Full details from the Manchester Camerata website.