A 4,000-year-old lullaby inspires Freya Waley Cohen's new piece for sister Tamsin as part of Lullabies programme with Cordelia Williams

Lullaby (noun) - A song sung to children to soothe them to rest. Also, any song which soothes to rest. (Oxford English Dictionary online)

Inevitably the idea of a lullaby is immediately associated with children but it can extend to any song related to rest and night. At the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room on Saturday 6 June, violinist Tamsin Waley Cohen and pianist Cordelia Williams are exploring lullabies including pieces associated with the atmospheres of night, slumber and dreams.

Central to the concert is a new work by Freya Waley Cohen (Tamsin's sister), Sweet as plum wine written for the performers. The piece is based on a 4,000-year- old lullaby text found etched on a Babylonian stone tablet in Akkadian cuneiform:

Little one, who dwelt in darkness
Now you’ve come and seen the sun.
Why the crying? Why the worries?
What has made your peace undone?
You have roused the household spirits
You have scared the guardian gods
‘Who has roused me? Who has scared me?’
‘Little baby woke you up!’
May you settle into slumber
Sweet as plum wine, deep as love

Freya Waley Cohen explains what came next:

"I memorised this text and started to sing it to my daughter at night. A sort of lullaby improvisation that quickly settled into a set melody. This melody is what you hear in this piece, and the piece is both a setting of my personal version of this lullaby, and a response to the ancient text itself."

The remainder of the programme moves from Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel to the famous Brahms lullaby, to Fritz Kreisler's arrangement of Dvorak's Songs my mother taught me, to music by Schubert and John Cage!

Back in 2024, I chatted to both Tamsin Waley Cohen about her work at the Two Moors Festival [see my interview] and to Freya Waley Cohen about her Spell book [see my interview]

Before the concert there is a talk Night Music: The Creative Power of Parenting, when Tamsin Waley-Cohen, Cordelia Williams and Octavia Bright discuss how parenting has affected their creative practices.  

Full details from the Southbank Centre website. 

send back the echo: exploring marginalised voices through the stories and music of deaf composers

Julian Azkoul and United Strings of Europe make their Southbank debut on 9 May at the Purcell Room with send back the echo, a concert exploring marginalised voices through the stories and music of deaf composers together with Deaf BSL actor Vilma Jackson. The event explores hearing loss and the nature of listening through the lived stories and music of Deaf composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Dame Evelyn Glennie, alongside works by contemporary composers Jasmin Rodgman, Jessie Montgomery and Gareth Farr. 

Vilma Jackson is a Deaf performance artist, actor, filmmaker, and advocate of Mozambican origin based in the United Kingdom  

British-Malaysian Jasmin Rodgman’s send back the echo is the focal point of the evening. Blending musical performance, dramaturgy and modulated sounds of nature, the work draws on Ludwig van Beethoven’s confessions to shed light on issues around disability and social alienation, movingly communicated in BSL by Vilma Jackson. 

Rodgman's piece was originally conceived for the ensemble’s 2020 film of the same name which premiered on BBC Arts and was selected for the London Short Film Festival amongst others. Beethoven’s personal letters and memoirs reveal a human story of intense passion, fear and joy as he reconciled solitude and deafness with a deep love of nature and music, however send back the echo is not an homage to the legend of Beethoven but rather a journey inspired by a deaf musician, which drives the overarching theme of this concert.

Julian Azkoul explains: "We are continually seeking ways to re-imagine string playing and the concert experience. Our interdisciplinary projects challenge us to stretch our thinking and to find new ways to engage and enthral. Every performance we give is a chance to tell a story, an opportunity to re-examine the familiar and discover something new. We invite you on a moving journey rooted in meaningful lived experiences, engaging with voices and perspectives too often overlooked."

The entire concert and spoken introductions will be signed in British Sign Language through the work of interpreters Kathryn Green and Hannah Marsden. There will be a pre-concert workshop at 6:30 PM open to ticket holders led by Deaf musician Ruth Montgomery of the charity Audiovisability introducing the evening’s programme and performers.

Further details from the Southbank Centre's website. 

The War Requiem, Gerontius, a complete Sleeping Beauty, Tippett's fourth: the London Philharmonic Orchestra's 2026/27 season at Southbank Centre

Edward Gardner (Photo: Jason Bell)

The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) has announced its 2026/27 season at the Southbank Centre. Under the title In Search of Purpose, the season explores the human spirit’s resilience and the quest for meaning. The season also includes a celebration of the London Philharmonic Choir’s 80th anniversary year with some major choral masterpieces.

The season opens with Edward Gardner conducting Britten's War Requiem with soloists Natalya Romaniw, Allan Clayton and Benjamin Appl, and Gardner brings the season to a close with Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with soloists American mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis, American tenor Michael Spyres and Norwegian baritone Yngve Søberg bringing a somewhat different perspective to the work. 

Other major choral works include Vaughan Williams' Dona Nobis Pacem with Gardner conducting and soloists Louise Alder and Gerald Finley in a programme that also includes the premiere of Judith Weir's Respire, Inspire; and a relative rarity in Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri with Samantha Clarke, Christiane Karg, Beth Taylor, Robert Murray, Lunga Eric Hallam and Thomas Oliemans.

Major symphonic utterances include Tippett’s Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony and Zemlinsky’s The Mermaid. There is a cycle of Beethoven's piano concertos along with Symphony No. 5.

New music includes the premiere of Mark Simpson's Piano Concerto with soloist Víkingur Ólafsson, conducted by Gardner, Karina Canellakis conducting a Dai Fujikura new work, Anja Bihlmaier conducting Jacob Mühlrad's Kavanah, for clarinet and orchestra with Martin Fröst. Tianyi Lu conducts the European premiere of Kevin Puts' The Brightness of Light with soprano Renee Fleming.

Other contemporary music includes a semi-staging, directed by Dan Ayling, of George Benjamin's Lessons in Love and Violence, conducted by Gardner with soloists Nathaniel Sullivan, Gyula Orendt, Georgia Jarman, Toby Spence and James Way, and later in the season Gardner also conducts Benjamin's Concerto for Orchestra. Unsuk Chin's subito con forza is conducted by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider.

Conductor Emeritus Vladimir Jurowski returns for two concerts. Wagner’s Prelude to Parsifal, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Mitsuko Uchida. Then a complete concert performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. The LPO is also welcoming Paavo Järvi in his new role as Chief Conductor & Artistic Advisor Designate with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10, plus music by Veljo Tormis and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (‘Emperor’), performed by Benjamin Grosvenor.

New cohorts are welcomed to the LPO's talent development programmes with 16 early-career musicians in the Future Firsts programme, two Fellow Conductors, five Young Composers, and a fresh intake of LPO Junior Artists, the LPO's trailblazing mentorship programme for talented teenage musicians from under-represented backgrounds, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. AN the LPO's social impact programmes reach 30,000 people annually through diverse education and community initiatives. Key projects this season include the FUNharmonics family concert series, the Crisis Creates programme for adults experiencing homelessness, and the award-winning OrchLab programme, as well as many other projects with schools and communities in London and beyond. The LPO is now working with 15 partners across East and West Sussex to champion inclusion, nurture local talent, and support wellbeing through music. This season marks a significant geographic expansion of the Orchestra’s South Coast activity, extending its award-winning community work into Bognor Regis, Dover and Folkestone.

Full details from the LPO's website.

Immense sympathy for rather overlooked work: Elgar's The Kingdom from David Temple, Crouch End Festival Chorus & Hertfordshire Chorus

Elgar: The Kingdom; Francesca Chiejina, Sarah Connolly, Benjamin Hulett, Ashley Riches, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Hertfordshire Chorus, London Orchestra da Camera, David Temple; Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed 29 January 2026

Having recorded the work last year, David Temple and Crouch End Festival Chorus reconnect with their original soloists and are joined by Hertfordshire Chorus for a performance that champions Elgar's underrated final oratorio and showcases an immense sympathy for the work from all performers.

There is something rather Wagner-like about Elgar's development of his final two oratorios, The Apostles and The Kingdom. For a start, his increased exposure to Wagner's music led to an increased fluidity in his approach to the drama. But in his creation of the works, Elgar's process rather resembled that of Wagner when that composer developed The Ring from a sketch for a single opera. The idea for the oratorios came to him in late 1899 when he received the commission for the 1900 Birmingham Festival that would lead to The Dream of Gerontius. Plans continued in 1902 when he was planning a large scale work, notionally The Apostles, for the 1903 Birmingham Festival. In the event, there was too much material and what had been planned as the final part of The Apostles (which now ended with the Ascension) developed into The Kingdom which premiered in Birmingham in 1906. His original ideas had included a third part, covering the 'Last Judgement & the next world as in Revelations'. Whether this would have come to pass is anyone's guess, but Elgar seemed to lose confidence in the idea and The Kingdom would be his last oratorio.

The Kingdom has long had its champions with many averring that the work is finer and more sophisticated than The Dream of Gerontius. But there is another difference, The Kingdom is firmly Bible-based, telling the story of the Apostles evangelising using a text that Elgar assembled from purely Biblical sources. Gerontius by contrast uses Cardinal Newman's imaginative reconstruction of the journey of a soul. Whilst this had a little too much Roman Catholic dogma in it for some of Elgar's contemporaries, the story itself has perhaps more resonance for the non-religious. Gerontius is about the trial of a soul, a concept that perhaps can be appreciated by many in its allegorical form. By contrast, The Kingdom is firmly Biblical and requires you to at least know the Acts of the Apostles. Elgar tells the story, but his expansion of the Biblical text is done in a way that creates a work that is contemplative rather than adding narrative clarity.

The conductor David Temple is amongst those who believe strongly in The Kingdom. He and Crouch End Festival Chorus (CEFC), which Temple co-founded in 1984, recorded The Kingdom for Signum Classics last year with soloists Francesca Chiejina (soprano), Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), Benjamin Hulett (tenor) and Ashley Riches (bass), and the London Mozart Players. Temple and CEFC were joined by the same soloists and Temple's other choir, Hertfordshire Chorus, plus London Orchestra da Camera for a performance of Elgar's The Kingdom at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on Thursday 29 January 2026.

Back to the 1890s: Dinis Sousa & the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment move out of their comfort zone reveal magic moments in Elgar

Elgar - Dinis Sousa, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Queen Elizabeth Hall

Elgar: In the South, Sea Pictures, Enigma Variations; Frances Gregory, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Dinis Sousa; Queen Elizabeth Hall
Reviewed 4 June 2025

Far from an exercise in academic completism, OAE's exploration of the sound world of Elgar's 1890s helped us view familiar music in new ways and brought a subtly different palate of colours and approach, moments of sheer magic.

Elgar's Enigma Variations premiered in 1899 and the composer went on to record it twice, acoustically in 1924 and electrically in 1926. A lot happened to orchestral sound in those intervening 25 years with technological and stylistic developments that would lead to the modern orchestral sound. As something of an end of term experiment, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's last orchestral concert of the 2024/25 season at the Southbank Centre featured the ensemble moving out of their comfort zone and explore the sound world of Elgar in the 1890s. They were joined by conductor Dinis Sousa, who in an engaging post-concert speech admitted that the concert was pushing the envelope for him too, and mezzo-soprano Frances Gregory. 

So, on 4 June 2025, Dinis Sousa conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Elgar's In the South, Sea Pictures (with Frances Gregory) and Enigma Variations at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Elgar: Sea Pictures - Frances Gregory, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment - Queen Elizabeth Hall

Powerful stuff: Opera North concludes its concert staging of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra with an evening filling the Royal Festival Hall with drama

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Roland Wood, Antony Hermus, Vazgen Gazaryan, Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra; Roland Wood, Sara Cortolezzis, Andrés Presno, Vazgen Gazaryan, Mandla Mndebele, Richard Mosley-Evans, director: PJ Harris, conductor: Anthony Hermus: Opera North at Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed 25 May 2025

A finely balanced cast create a very satisfying and compelling performance of one of Verdi's darkest yet most fascinating dramas, with Opera North's chorus and orchestra on thrilling form.

Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is a strange opera. Dark and foreboding, it features four male characters none of whom are entirely admirable, a title role without a conventional aria and a heroine who veers perilously close to the Victorian Virgin. Verdi regarded his unsuccessful first version of the opera (from 1857) as too gloomy and 24 years later would use the revision as a test of whether he and Arigo Boito could work together. They created an entirely new scene to conclude Act One (the Council Chamber scene) and tweaked the rest. Boito and Verdi were canny enough not to let the new scene overbalance the old. But you cannot help wishing that the two had started again from scratch. Yet for some people, Simon Boccanegra remains their favourite Verdi opera, its distinctive dark tinta being profoundly seductive.

Opera North chose the work for their 2025 concert staging, launching the production in Bradford on 24 April for the City of Culture celebrations and ending the tour on Saturday 24 May 2025 at the Royal Festival Hall, when we caught the performance.

PJ Harris' production put the Opera North Chorus and Orchestra (47 singers, 64 instrumentalists) at the centre, using the full space of the auditorium and providing an acting area for the soloists at the front of the stage. There was very little that was semi- about this staging. Stripped down, perhaps, full acted and compelling, definitely. The climactic Council Chamber scene might have lacked the claustrophobic sense of a conventional staging, but having the chorus surrounding the audience in the stalls was something again, particularly combined with Roland Wood's magisterial performance in the title role.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra - Andrés Presno, Sara Cortolezzis - Opera North (Photo: James Glossop)

Anna Reid's costumes were contemporary with an elegant classical structure providing flexible locations. In a famously complex opera, clarity was all here with different coloured banners and rosettes for the Plebeans and the Patricians. Inevitably, this lacked the atmospheric chiaroscuro that the opera cries out for, but Harris and his team created and impressive two and three-quarter hours of sustained tension. 

Antony Hermus conducted with Roland Wood as Simon Boccanegra, Sara Cortolezzis as Amelia, Andrés Presno as Gabriele [we saw him as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca with Opera North in 2023, see my review], Vazgen Gazaryan as Fiesco, Mandla Mndebele as Paolo and Richard Mosley-Evans as Pietro, plus Laura Kelly and Ivan Sharpe from the chorus as Amelia's maid and a captain.

Powerful stuff: Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky's dramatic war-inspired symphony alongside marvellous music from Prokofiev's Ukraine-themed opera, Semyon Kotko

Prokofiev: Suite from Semyon Kotko - Vladimir Jurowski, London Philharmonic Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Marc Gascoigne)

Prokofiev, Mussorgsky/Denisov, Lyatoshynsky; Matthew Rose, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vladimir Jurowski; London Festival Hall
Reviewed 2 April 2025

Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky's magnum opus, his war-inspired symphony at the centre of a powerful programme that also included Prokofiev's marvellous music from his neglected opera Semyon Kotko

As part of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Moments Remembered series at the Royal Festival Hall, conductor emeritus Vladimir Jurowski conducted a programme centred on Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky's Symphony No. 3, a work written in 1951 and coming directly out of the composer's experience of the Second World War. To begin the programme, the Ukrainian theme continued with Prokofiev's suite from his final opera, Semyon Kotko which depicts wartime struggle in a Ukrainian village. Not uncontroversially, between these two, Jurowski placed Mussorgsky's song cycle Songs and Dances of Death in the orchestration by Edison Denisov with bass Matthew Rose.

Mussorgsky/Denisov: Songs & Dances of Death - Vladimir Jurowski, Matthew Rose, London Philharmonic Orchestra - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Marc Gascoigne)

Semyon Kotko was the first of Prokofiev's two operas written on a Soviet subject and adhering to the tenets of Soviet realism. It was intended to have a first production directed by Prokofiev's friend, Vsevolod Meyerhold, who was at that time the director of the Stanislavsky Opera Theatre. But the whole project seemed in danger when Meyerhold was arrested on 20 June 1939 and disappeared (he was shot in 1940). The production did happen and was respectably received, but the opera was set in a Ukrainian village in 1918 with fighting between the Red Army and the Germans. Semyon Kotko got mired in the Soviet Union's complex relationship with Nazi Germany in 1939 and 1940, and after 1941 the opera was not produced. It only reappeared in 1958 in Brno, entering Russian opera theatres in the 1970s. It is still a rarity, and any UK performances have relied on visiting Russian opera companies.

Life enhancing: the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Bach's Brandenburg Concertos

Bach: Brandenburg Concertos; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Queen Elizbeth Hall
Reviewed 13 November 2024

The Brandenburg Concertos complete, vivid, vibrant and sometimes a little raw, the sheer energy, enthusiasm and technical nous really carrying you away

Bach almost certainly never intended his Brandenburg Concertos to be performed en masse, all six at once. In fact, we have no record at all of any performances of the concertos in this form during Bach's lifetime, his presentation manuscript (see illustration above) for Six Concerts Avec plusieurs instruments simply sat in the Margrave of Brandenburg's library; so, at least someone regarded the work well enough to look after it.

After all, the various different line ups for the concertos make this rather an extravagant gesture. We don't really know why this particular set of concertos with these particular scorings, and there remain plenty of questions about the pieces. But in the right performances the music lifts vividly off the page. 

This was ample demonstrated by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's (OAE) performances of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall on 13 November 2024. The 21 musicians performed one to part, without a conductor with violinists Huw Daniel, Margaret Faultess and Rodolfo Richter sharing the directing, with violist Oliver Wilson directing the sixth concerto.

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall

The Brandenburg Concertos have played an important role in the OAE's life, ever since the ensemble's founding (they celebrate 40 years in 2026) and one of the players was actually around for the ensemble's very first performance of the music!

For the evening's concert, the concertos were arranged in non-numerical order, creating a nice balance of solo instruments. We began with first concerto, which features the horns, then the third, strings only, then the fifth, with flute, violin and harpsichord. After the interval it was more wind, with the fourth, with two recorders and violin, then strings again with the sixth concerto with its violas, cello and violas da gamba, then we finally returned to brass with the second concerto with its high trumpet part.

Compelling performances: Stephen Hough, YL Male Voice Choir, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia launch Nordic Soundscapes

Akseli Gallen-Kallela: Kullervo Sets Off for War
(Mural, 1901, in the Old Student House, Helsinki University)

Sigfúsdóttir: Oceans, Grieg: Piano Concerto; Sibelius: Kullervo; Stephen Hough, Johanna Rusanen, Tommi Hakala, Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat (YL) Male Voice Choir, Philharmonia, Santtu-Matias Rouvali; Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed 26 September 2024

A contemporary composer spanning orchestral and post-rock, and two 19th century composers balancing Nationalism and the Germanic symphonic tradition. A fascinating start to Nordic Soundscapes

Sibelius' Kullervo remains an intriguing, sprawling and sometimes mesmerising work whose importance is immense. It premiered in 1892, only the second large-scale symphonic work to come out of Finland and an important way-marker in the country's musical history and journey to political independence. But the work does not occupy a place on concert platforms as often as it might.

On Thursday 26 September 2024, Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Philharmonia opened their 2024/25 season at the Royal Festival Hall with the first concert in their Nordic Soundscapes season, performing María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir's Oceans, Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto with soloist Stephen Hough and Jean Sibelius' Kullervo with soprano Johanna Rusanen, baritone Tommi Hakala and Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat (YL) Male Voice Choir.

Sibelius: Kullervo - Johanna Rusanen, Tommi Hakala, Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat Male Voice Choir, Philharmonia, Santtu-Matias Rouvali - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Philharmonia/Mark Allan)

It was a long concert, Kullervo lacks the concision of Sibelius' later symphonic utterances, the young Sibelius had been listening to a bit too much Bruckner in Vienna. There was a sneaking suspicion that, perhaps, we did not quite need another performance of Grieg's eternal piano concerto, but then that was to countered by the remarkable charisma that soloist Stephen Hough.

Igor Levit, Joyce DiDonato, Thomas Adès: Southbank Centre's Opening Weekend launches its 2024/25 season

Igor Levit (Photo: Felix Broede)

The Southbank Centre's 2024/25 season [see my preview] starts with a bang featuring a five-day Opening Weekend (25 to 29 September 2024) when Resident Orchestras and Resident Artists join with other guests for a dozen events across the site. Highlights include Joyce DiDonato in Berlioz, a recital from Igor Levit, Rachmaninoff's The Bells and Lawrence Power and Thomas Adès exploring fairy tales.

Things kick off with Edward Gardner conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlioz' La mort de Cléopâtre, plus music by Barber and Beethoven, then the following day Santtu-Matias Rouvali launches the Philharmonia Orchestra's Nordic Soundscapes [see my preview] with Sibelius, Grieg and María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. Both orchestras and conductors return further into the weekend, with Gardner and the LPO in Rachmaninoff including The Bells, and Santtu and the Philharmonia in Sibelius and Nielsen.

Igor Levit's recital puts together Bach's Chromatic fantasia and fugue in D minor, BWV.903, Brahms' Ballades, Op. 10 and Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Symphony No.7. There is chamber music with a difference in ;Fairytale Dances when violist Lawrence Power joins composer/pianist Thomas Adès, a percussionist and a dancer for fairytale music that moves from Purcell and Dowland to Britten, Tippett, Berio and Stravinsky, plus of course Adès himself. Cellist Matthew Barley's Light Stories is altogether more personal as he uses music and image to tell the story of his teenage journey from trauma and recovery into the light.

The Multi-Storey Orchestra's Verified is about search for authenticity and acceptance among the growing pressures of social media and living in a digital age, whilst Charles Hazlewood conducts the ParaOrchestra in Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, his an astonishing meditation on loss and transcendence.

Scottish Ensemble (Photo: Hugh Carswell)

Things end with the Scottish Ensemble in a programme culminating in Philip Glass' Symphony No. 3. Except, of course, that is not the end and there is an action packed season ahead.

Full details from the Southbank Centre's website.

Nordic Soundscapes: Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s fourth season as principal conductor of the Philharmonia opens with a focus on music, nature and the climate crisis

Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s fourth season as principal conductor of the Philharmonia opens with a season focusing on the relationship between music, nature and the climate crisis from a Nordic perspective, Nordic Soundscapes (26 September to 10 November) with music by Sibelius, Grieg and Nielsen plus seven UK premieres from contemporary Nordic composers, plus Notes on Nature discussions that will delve to the themes of the series.

Things open with something rather special, Sibelius' Kullervo where Rouvali and the Philharmonia are joined by the choir that sang at its premiere back in 1892, the YL Male Voice Choir. There is also Grieg's Piano Concerto with Stephen Hough and the UK premiere of Icelandic composer María Sigfúsdóttir’s Oceans. Rouvali's second concert features the UK premiere of Miho Hazma's What the Wind Brings (she is the Tokyo-born chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band), plus Nielsen's Violin Concerto (with Bomsori Kim) and Sibelius' The Oceanides and Symphony No. 3. Sibelius' Violin Concerto features María Dueñas as soloist, with Rouvali conducting a programme that includes the UK premiere of Swedish composer Mats Larsson Gothe's Submarea and Nielsen's Symphony No. 5.

For the Music of Today series, Chloe Rooke conducts the UK premieres of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's Semafor and Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's Two Inger Christensen Song (with soprano Ella Taylor). The Philharmonia Wind Quintet will be performing Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen's Memoria and Nielsen's Wind Quintet.

Emilia Hoving conducts the UK premiere of Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen's Mosaics plus Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 and Sibelius' Symphony No. 2, and the final concert in the series features Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski’s Flounce, the UK premiere of Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg's Viola Concerto (with Lawrence Power) and Sibelius' Symphony No. 1.

There are also concerts outside the theme, Sir Andras Schiff directs the orchestra and is soloist in piano concertos by Haydn and Mozart, plus Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Marin Alsop conducts an all Mahler programme mixing the music of Gustav with that of Alma. Rouvali conducts Tchaikovsky and Khachaturian including his Violin Concerto with Nemanja Radulović.

Full details from the Philharmonia's website.

Light Stories: cellist Matthew Barley unveils his latest cross-arts collaboration, alongside creating the Matthew Barley Arts Foundation.

Matthew Barley [Photo: Madeleine Farley]

When I first interviewed cellist Matthew Barley back in 2012 [see my interview], he was preparing for an amazing 100-venue tour of Britain for Britten 2013, combining Britten and Bach for solo cello, including specially commissioned visuals from Yeast Culture, with Barley controlling the animations himself via foot pedal!

Since then his interest in cross-arts projects has continued and in 2023 he established the Matthew Barley Arts Foundation (which has recently achieved charitable status). The Foundation aims to create high quality music and other art for performance and dissemination that is made in a way that always treats all people involved and adjacent to its creation with fairness and respect, with projects combining movement, sound, the digital visual realm and a range of repertoire and musical styles, providing a platform and training for the next generation of musicians, helping them to consider how they too might push boundaries.

Barley's next project, to be launched in the Autumn, is a prime example. Light Stories, a new multidisciplinary collaboration with specially commissioned visuals from production company Yeast Culture, and on-screen dancer, Mavin Khoo, explores the transformative power of music to heal, console, and uplift.  There will be two performances as part of the Southbank Centre’s Contemporary Edit programme (28 September 2024), with subsequent performances including the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, as part of the Cardiff Music City Festival (3 October), and St George’s Bristol (11 October).

Light Stories weaves together music, projected imagery, and electronics to tell a very personal story of trauma and recovery; at the age of 16, Matthew Barley experienced a life-threatening psychotic episode caused by a drug overdose which left him scarred both physically and emotionally. Music became his lifeline.

The evening weaves together music by contemporary composers Anna Meredith, Joby Talbot, John Metcalfe, Giovanni Sollima, and Jan Bang, plus Barley's own music alongside  and Bach's Prelude from Suite No.6.

The project will extend beyond performance to include workshops with higher education institutions, where participants will engage in discussions on mental health and its connection to art, providing a safe and supportive space for creativity and expression. 

Matthew Barley's Light Stories will be released by Signum Classics on 27 September.

Lobesgesang: Mendelssohn's rarely performed symphony-cantata is a fine climax to Sir Andras Schiff and the OAE's exploration of the composer's symphonic music

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 Mendelssohn. It is strange that the effort needs making, but we still have a tendency to downgrade the composer's symphonic output. Schiff and the OAE, however, have been putting it top dead centre with three concerts at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall which featured all of the composer's symphonies, two piano concertos with Schiff directing from the keyboard and the Violin Concerto in E Minor with Alina Ibragimova. 

We caught the final concert, on Friday 26 April 2024 which featured Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor with Alina Ibragimova, and Symphony No. 2 'Lobesgesang' with the Choir of the Enlightenment and soloists Lucy Crowe, Hilary Cronin and Nick Pritchard (replacing Nicky Spence).

We began with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, his last major orchestral work. Conceived for the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the work took Mendelssohn from 1828 to 1845 to write, belying its apparent effortlessness. Schiff used an orchestra based on 33 strings, double woodwind, two horns and two trumpets, quite a large group for a work which can sometimes be given chamber proportions. Alina Ibragimova began with a fine-grained tone, light and fluid playing allied to free phrasing. She never attempted to big-up her tone nor force her way into the spotlight, it all felt somehow effortless and natural, yet compelling and very stylish. In the first movement, there were moments that were daringly intimate, but for all the period manners, there was some very real drama. Schiff encouraged his players to bring out some beautifully vivid colours in the orchestral transition. When the second movement proper, began, it was all singing elegance and fine grained tone. Intimate and delicate, yet with an underlying strength. This delicate approach continued into the last movement, which was delightfully pointed and I loved the sound of Ibragimova's violin with the wind bubbling along beside her, and the excitement continued to the end. What this performance did was discover a work that was both stronger and more delicate than is often the case, and was notably lacking that sense of saccharine that an over-vibrato-laden violin solo can bring.

Southbank Centre's new season: Schoenberg's 150th, the OAE in Bruckner, Joyce Didonato in Berlioz, The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim

Igor Levit (Photo: Felix Broede )

The Southbank Centre has announced its Autumn/Winter programme for 2024/25 which includes a five-day Opening Weekend, residencies from violist Lawrence Power, organist James McVinnie and Manchester Collective, and visitors include Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson, the Borodin Quartet celebrating its 80th anniversary, Concerto Italiano, The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring and the BBC Concert Orchestra with Unclassified Live.

The Opening Weekend, from 25 to 29 September 2024, features Joyce DiDonato in Berlioz with Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia launching its Nordic Soundscapes series with Sibelius, Grieg and María Sigfúsdóttir conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali, violist Lawrence Power and composer Thomas Ades, the Multi-Storey Orchestra, cellist Matthew Barley, the Paraorchestra, and the Scottish Ensemble. Pianist Igor Levit performs works by Bach, Brahms and Beethoven in his Royal Festival Hall solo recital debut.

Lawrence Power will continue his residency by joining forces with composer/soprano Heloise Werner and lutenist Sergio Bucheli, and Power is the soloist in the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Viola Concerto with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Manchester Collective continues its residency with collaborations with pianist extraordinaire Zubin Kanga and cellist phenomenon Abel Selacoe. Organist James McVinnie [see my recent interview with him] continues his residency with Stanford, Byrd, and Liszt on the RFH organ, and Bach on organ and piano.

Daniel Barenboim will be conducting the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, Chineke! perform music by Florence Price (the UK premiere of her Symphony No. 4!), Eleanor Alberga, Valerie Coleman and Brian Raphael Nabor, the London Symphony Orchestra pairs Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 with Schoenberg's A survivor in Warsaw, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be burning the candle at both ends, presenting all of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and performing Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 (not in the same programme!).

The London Sinfonietta is celebrating Schoenberg's 150th anniversary, with Jonathan Berman conducting the Ode to Napoleon (no, I've never heard that live either) and Chamber Symphony. They will be joined by the Royal Academy of Music's Manson Ensemble for a performance of Morton Feldman's For Samuel Beckett. The Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today will feature conductor Chloe Rooke and soprano Ella Taylor in Saariaho’s Semafor and Hans Abrahmsen’s Two Inger Christensen Songs. The London Philharmonic Orchestra's season will include Evan Williams’ Dead White Man Music (Concerto for Harpsichord and Chamber Ensemble), and Sarod player Amjad Ali Khan performs his own concerto Samaagam alongside a new overture by Reena Esmail and selections from film soundtracks by AR Rahman.

The full season is available via the Southbank Centre website.

Energy, discipline, control and sheer love of music-making: National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Brass Band in Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Prokofiev, Julius Eastman and more

National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Jessica Cottis

Catalyst: Coleridge-Taylor, Julius Eastman, Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Prokofiev; National Youth Brass Band and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Tess Jackson, Jessica Cottis; Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed 14 April 2024

From Julius Eastman's creative provocation in the Clore Ballroom to the stupendous combined brass band and orchestra in Higgins new piece, an astonishing day of music making full of energy, discipline, control and sheer love of music-making 

Under the catch-all title of Catalyst, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain arrived at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 14 April 2024 and filled the building with music. During the afternoon, there was a side-by-side performance with local school children of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Ballade in the Clore Ballroom, as part of the orchestra's outreach programmes. Then before the main concert members of the main concert, members of the orchestra gathered in the Clore Ballroom for a performance of Julius Eastman's Stay on It. The main concert featured the National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Brass Band in Gavin Higgins' Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra, conducted by Tess Jackson, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5, conducted by Jessica Cottis. The second half opened with a short fanfare by Dani Howard involving all the brass performers from both ensembles.

National Youth Orchestra & National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain (Photo: Chris Chris Christodoulou)

Catalyst: National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, National Youth Brass Band & Jessica Cottis in Gavin Higgin's Concerto Grosso for Brass Band & Orchestra & much more

National Youth Brass Band

Gavin Higgin's Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2022 by The Tredegar Band, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and Ryan Bancroft. The work was co-commissioned by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and the orchestra is joining forces with the National Youth Brass Band under conductor Jessica Cottis to give two performances of Higgins' work in Liverpool (12 April 2024) and London (14 April 2024). The programme will be completed by Prokofiev's wartime Symphony No. 5 but there is a lot more to events than that.

On Thursday 11 April, musicians from NYOGB under Agata Zając will perform music by Simon Steen-Anderson and Carlos Simon, plus a movement of Dani Howard's Trombone Concerto and Julius Eastmn's Stay On It.  Then Jessica Cottis conducts the NYOGB and National Youth Brass Band in Higgins and Prokofiev at the Philharmonic Hall on the evening of Friday 12 April and on Saturday 13 April, the National Youth Brass Band gets its own spot in a programme that includes Karl Jenkins' first work for brass band.

In London at the Southbank Centre on 14 April, Cottis and the young musicians will be repeating their Higgins and Prokofiev programme, and before hand the the Clore Ballroom will pulsate with the vibrant energy of Julius Eastman’s creative provocation, Stay on it!

In Liverpool, London and Saffron Walden, the young musicians will be running open events to share extraordinary music across the city, lead workshops and inspire others to play their part and get excited about music. 

Full details from the NYOGB's website.

From Early Music to contemporary: the Royal Festival Hall organ is 70 and organist James McVinnie is celebrating with a Southbank Centre residency

James McVinnie performing at the Royal Festival Hall organ with Bedroom Community - Sept 2015

The Royal Festival Hall organ is 70. Built from 1950–1954 to the specification of the London County Council's consultant, Ralph Downes, it was restored and re-configured by Harrison & Harrison as part of the hall's reconstruction during 2005-2007 and it was re-inaugurated on its 60th anniversary in March 2014. Now, to celebrate the instrument's 70th birthday, organist James McVinnie has a residency at the Southbank Centre featuring organ recitals including a wide range of repertoire as well as an appearance by the James McVinnie Ensemble.

Though James had played the organ once before the rebuild, he was not familiar with it until he came to play it as part of the 2014 celebrations. But he spent two years as an organ scholar at St Albans Cathedral where the organ was also designed by Ralph Downes and built by Harrison & Harrison (in 1963). James's period at St Albans was incredibly formative for him, as he performed at Evensong every evening, and he learned from the organ. This meant that when he came to play the Royal Festival Hall's organ, everything seemed to be familiar and with both instruments the organist is right up close to the instrument.

Ralph Downes designed the organ to challenge the status quo of what an organ was in the 1950s. Organ building in Britain at the time still adhered to the romantic ideal as evinced by the organs at Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal Albert Hall. But Downes was something of an outsider, when the musical establishment was conservative; Downes was not interested in the tradition of the organ as emulating an orchestra. Whilst Downes' approach was very forward-looking, he used techniques and philosophies from organ building from 200 years previously. At the time, the organ establishment was very dismissive of these 'primitive' organ-building techniques.

James McVinnie (Photo: Graham Lacadao)

The Afghan Youth Orchestra makes its UK debut as part of South Asian Sounds at Southbank Centre

The Afghan Youth Orchestra

On Thursday 7 March 2024, the Afghan Youth Orchestra makes its debut at the Southbank Centre at the start of its first UK tour, Breaking the Silence. The orchestra was originally formed in 2010, but took its present form in 2022 after the orchestra was forced into exile due to the return of the Taliban to power. Now based in Portugal, the orchestra consists of 47 male and female musicians aged between 14 and 20 and from diverse backgrounds, playing on traditional Afghan and Western classical music, played on both Afghan and Western instruments under the direction of the conductor, Tiago Da Silva.

The concert on 7 March is followed by further appearances in Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham. There is also a CrowdFunder to help support the expenses of the tour.

The Afghan Youth Orchestra's tour is being presented by SAMA Arts, one of the UK’s oldest arts organisations in the genre of traditional and contemporary South Asian arts, and the Southbank Centre concert is part of a South Asian Sounds  season at the Southbank Centre with a full day of programming on 10 March 2024, featuring some of the finest artistes from South Asia and the UK.

Full details of the Afghan Youth Orchestra's tour and South Asian Sounds from the SAMA Arts website.

Shockingly, the orchestra had its Visas denied by the UK government, thus threatening what should have been a beacon of hope. Thankfully that decision has now been reversed. But it should never have happened.

Bach's Christmas Oratorio from Masaaki Suzuki and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Masaaki Suzuki (Photo: Marco Borggreve)

Bach: Christmas Oratorio (Parts 1, 2 & 3), Singet dem Herrn; Jessica Cale, Hugh Cutting, Guy Cutting, Florian Störtz, Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Masaaki Suzuki; Queen Elizabeth Hall
Reviewed 2 December 2023

The first of two concerts encompassing the whole of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in music making of the highest order, vividly bringing Bach's colourful music to life but also concentrating on the essential narrative

Written for performance across six occasions from Christmas to Epiphany, Bach's Christmas Oratorio was never designed for concert use and gives performers something of a challenge. Somewhat too long for the average concert, ensembles usually choose to perform a selection of the work's six parts, but for his performances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor Masaaki Suzuki chose a different approach, spreading the entire work across two days and adding extra music by Bach.

On Saturday 2 December 2023, Masaaki Suzuki conducted the Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in Parts One to Three of Bach's Christmas Oratorio along with the motet Singet dem Herrn. Then on the Sunday, he conducted Parts Four to Six along with the Sanctus from the Mass in B Minor. We caught the first of the concerts, with soloists Jessica Cale, Hugh Cutting, Guy Cutting and Florian Störtz.

The soloists sang in the choir, making 16 vocalists in all, stepping out for their solo moments which made sense both of what we know of Bach's own performance practise and of the way the allocation of solos is somewhat uneven. Though it did mean that the performance was counterpointed by rather a lot of walking about from the soloists.

There's music in all things: Bath Festival Orchestra marks the Berlioz 220 and Poulenc 125 anniversaries with a début performance at Southbank's Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bath Festival Orchestra

Peter Manning, principal conductor/artistic director of Bath Festival Orchestra (BFO), had this to say about their forthcoming concert marking the Berlioz 220 and Poulenc 125 anniversaries. 'Our January programme considers a vast timeline spanning the troubadour influences of Poulenc’s neo-classical works. The three works we shall perform are distinct but each paints a vivid narrative through live music and each is crafted to evoke emotion. Therefore, by incorporating Byron’s influence on Berlioz, the programme will embrace the twin joys of literature and music thereby echoing Byron's words: "There's music in all things".'  

The concert (Sunday, 14 January 2024, 7.30pm, Queen Elizabeth Hall) opens with Louise Farrenc’s Overture in E minor, Op. 23. An extraordinary pianist, teacher and composer of the Romantic period - three symphonies, a few choral works, numerous chamber pieces and a wide variety of piano music - her ‘magical musical palette’ was much admired by Berlioz while the sensational young violist, Dana Zemtsov, makes her South Bank début fresh from the release of her stunning new album, Fathers & Daughters (Channel Classics Records) joining forces with BFO in bringing a new focus to the music of Berlioz in his masterpiece, Harold in Italy, inspired by the composer's Italian travels and Lord Byron's famous autobiographical poem, Childe Harold, written in four parts and published between 1812 and 1818. The dedicatee was ‘Ianthe’ (Lady Charlotte Harley) a young beautiful girl that Byron knew well. 

The narrative describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who’s disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it’s an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term ‘childe’, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. 

Bringing the concert to a close, Poulenc's Sinfonietta, offers the audience a neoclassical palette cleanser! The composer’s only symphonic work, it’s light and full of dance rhythms while witty and satirical at the same time. The first movement begins expressively, the second is scherzo-like in character reminiscent of the last movement of Les biches, the third’s gentle with an expansive melodic theme while the finale recalls Haydn with folksy themes that scurry along to a breathless and excited conclusion. 

A pre-concert talk will be given by Royal Society of Literature Fellow, Fiona Sampson, MBE, and BFO's artistic director, Peter Manning, hosted by BBC Radio 3’s Donald Macleod. The trio will explore the 'romantic' hero in the work of Berlioz and Lord Byron while examining the female voice in 19th-century music and literature.  

An ensemble of brilliant, early career orchestral players, Bath Festival Orchestra is united by the desire to create joyful, entertaining, enriching and relevant experiences for and with people whether in concert halls, churches, community spaces, educational settings or any other location where there are people who want to engage with music. 

Under the leadership of Peter Manning, BFO aspires to be an orchestra for the 21st century: inclusive, collaborative, accessible and responsible for its impact on the world. As such, the orchestra - who extends its reach beyond Bath and London offering performances across the UK particularly in under-served communities while through its ‘orchestrate’ programme supports the next generation of music enthusiasts - welcomes players of diverse nationalities and performs a broad repertoire by composers of all backgrounds.  

As a soloist, Dana Zemtsov (who has released to critical acclaim five albums on Channel Classics Records with the latest just released) has performed with orchestras the world over working under the baton of Leif Segerstam, Otto Tausk and Daniel Raiskin.  

Interestingly, too, pianists Anna Fedorova/Borys Fedorov and violists Dana Zemtsov/Mikhail Zemtsov are embarking on a journey through generations of their respected families. And throughout years of their friendship Dana Zemtsov and Anna Fedorova have discovered many similarities in their upbringing. For instance, both of their parents met in Moscow's conservatory. Dana’s parents (Julia Dinerstein and Mikhail Zemtsov) are renowned violists and professors while Anna’s parents (Tatiana Abayeva and Borys Fedorov) are renowned pianists and professors.  

With their album Fathers & Daughters they journey through the generations performing works with daughter and father respectively, fathers together, daughters together and, finally, daughters and their fathers.  

Therefore, the Fedorova dynasty of pianists joins forces with the Zemtsov dynasty of violists performing music on Fathers & Daughters by Yevgeni Zemtsov, Frédéric Chopin, Nikolay Roslavets, Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Scriabin, Michael Kugel and Mikhail Zemtsov while Borys Fedorov has written a piece especially for the album - a perfect nostalgic portrayal of the atmosphere Dana and Anna’s ancestors grew up in. A nice story! 

Tony Cooper

Further information from the orchestra's website.