Welcome to BBC Music Magazine’s guide to concerts in the UK and Ireland.
To find a concert simply fill in one or more boxes and click search. If you’d like to add an event to the diary, click here or go to www.concertdiary.com
From mid-winter to spring in the company of some of Europe’s finest young chamber musicians: Friday lunchtimes are the perfect way to start an Aldeburgh weekend. Take advantage of the new start time and book for the lunch deals at the Wentworth Hotel.
Sarah-Jane recently graduated from the Royal College of Music with First Class Honours. Her principal study professor was Kathleen Livingstone. Whilst at the College, she participated in Master Classes with Sarah Walker, Jane Manning and Roger Vignoles. Her oratorio repertoire includes Handel Messiah, Faure Requiem, Mozart Requiem, Vivaldi Gloria, Rossini Stabat Mater, Dvorak Mass in D Minor and many more. Sarah-Jane has performed solos at prestigious venues such as St Paul's Church Covent Garden, The National Portrait Gallery, The Royal Albert Hall and Cadogan Hall. Her opera chorus work includes work for the Classical Opera Company in Cosi Fan Tutte and for Kenneth Branagh in the film version of The Magic Flute. Moreover, Sarah-Jane is the winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Bursary for Young Singers 2006, The Leith Hill Award 2008 and is supported by the Josephine Baker Trust. Last year, Sarah-Jane performed a piece by composer Errollyn Wallen live on BBC3's programme 'In Tune'. Sarah-Jane recently recorded as part of a small chorus for the advert for the new fragrance (pour femme) 'Flora' by Gucci. She just made her Royal Opera House debut as a 'Savoyard' in Donizetti's Opera 'Linda di Chamounix' conducted by Sir Mark Elder. Sarah-Jane is the winner of the Jackdaws Great Elm Vocal Awards 2009 and she is supported by the Peter Moores Foundation.
Kentaro Nagai, born in 1986, studies piano at the Royal College of Music in his first year Master's programme with the Scholarship funded by the RCM, recently receiving the first class honour for his Bachelor of Music Degree. His musical training began at the age of four largely influenced by his mother who is an opera singer and a lieder. He made a concerto debut at the age of eight after wining a number of competitions in Japan. Then at the age of 14, he moved to Canada where he received several music awards and scholarships including the Canmore Mayor's Award for the Honourable Citizen. He has given numerous performances in Japan, Canada and Europe at such venues as the Banff Centre in Canada, St Paul's Cathedral, the Steinway Hall, Cadogan Hall, National Gallery, and Bulgaria Hall (Sofia). Kentaro also appeared as a soloist for concertos and most recently he performed with Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. He benefited from several masterclasses given by such pianists as William Fong, Stephen Hough, John Lill, Ronan O'Hora and Kathryn Stott. Kentaro has previously studied with Hiroko Hamaka and Suzanne Ruberg-Gordon and currently studies with Gordon Fergus-Thompson and John Blakely.
St Barnabas Friday Lunchtime Concert Series.
Foyles announce a new Friday lunchtime series of free classical concerts, in the intimate setting of the wooden beamed gallery at Foyles Charing Cross Road. Taking place twice a month, the concerts will feature a diverse range of artists and ensembles performing works from across the classical repertoire.
In 2008 Foyles opened a classical CD and DVD department on the 3rd floor of the Charing Cross Road store, alongside Ray’s Jazz and the extensive collection of sheet music and music books.
The Royal Academy Soloists, the Academy’s elite string ensemble, perform under the director of Clio Gould, leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Violin of London Sinfonietta. Part of the popular free on Fridays series.
Composed just a year after the searing classical tragedy of The Rape of Lucretia, and for the same chamber orchestral forces, Albert Herring could not be more different. Here we have a vibrant comedy, set in the heart of a quintessentially rural England, at the turn of the twentieth century. The story tells of a naïve and shy teenage boy, cast (in the absence of any suitable girls for May Queen) as May King for the village’s May Fair. The events that unfold are hilarious, the resolution triumphant.
But the opera is just as multi-faceted as all of Britten’s other operas. Beneath the high comedy there are dark undertones, frail insecurities and touching paradoxes, all of which illuminate the human condition even as we laugh at its foibles and eccentricities.
Royal Academy Opera welcomes back the distinguished director John Copley, collaborating for the first time with conductor Nicholas Kok.
Further performance on Monday 15th March.
Berlioz frequently turned to Shakespeare for inspiration, and in Béatrice et Bénédict produced a delightful and sensuous score based on Much Ado About Nothing. The overture contains some of his most beautifully crafted and elegant music.
Scriabin’s Piano Concerto is a virtuosic work of unabashed Romanticism. Its Chopinesque charm and filigree fingerwork hide the fact that it is a highly technically demanding work, full of chromaticism and syncopation.
Tchaikovsky found himself briefly free from the catalogue of personal crises in the late 1880s, and his Fifth Symphony reflects this with moments of comfort and warmth. Dazzling shafts of bright optimism are cast like lightning bolts from the brooding orchestral shadows.
It may happen once a season or once in a lifetime. Along comes a talent, someone extraordinary that makes you rethink a piece of music you’ve known forever. It happened with Peter Jablonski. - The Washington Post.
It was Schumann’s unflinching adoration for his pianist wife Clara that spawned the Piano Concerto, a love-letter in music that offers a touching insight into one of the most famously passionate romances of the nineteenth century. But Schumann also took the young Johannes Brahms very much to heart, who he said would spring like Minerva from the head of Jove to take the compositional world by storm. He was only partly right; the First Symphony heard on 11 December took Brahms a painstaking fourteen years to write. But the Second did indeed spring forth like Minerva, flowing as seamlessly as a stream, abounding in pure, exhilarating joy.
Hear it first online. Access our online playlist of the music for our concerts.
It’s nearly a quarter of a century since the LSO’s last visited the Hall and it’s returning with a bang! Sibelius smelled the scent of the first snow in his 6th Symphony, while evocative landscape turns to elemental seascape in the Interludes Britten extracted from his opera Peter Grimes premiered in June 1945. Scarcely a month later the world would change forever with the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, subject of a more recent operatic head-turner: John Adams’ audacious Dr Atomic. To conduct the symphony of the opera the New York Times called the musical event of the year, none other than Adams himself - in his element in more senses than one.
Violence is a by-product of my music; it's not something I putin. I am not expressing violence. It's the nature of the material that I use, perhaps, that equates with violence. - Harrison Birtwistle.
Whilst violence may be inherent in some aspects of ritual, it is by no means the only characteristic of it. Placed next to Birtwistle's Ritual Fragment, the Chimera Ensemble shows ritual in a wholly differnt way in Kurtag's solemn music and in Vivier's dramatic Lonely Child for soprano and ensemble. To be presented with works by composers based in York.
Find out what's in this month's magazine...
Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet's latest musical adventure takes him back to 1920s New York to perform and record Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in its original jazz-band incarnation. Click here to find out more.
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Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances; The Isle of the Dead; The Rock
Royal Liverpool PO/Vasily Petrenko
'Vasily Petrenko's nose for atmosphere even excels that of Neeme Järvi'
Shostakovich • Schnittke:
Piano Trios
Kempf Trio
'This is the first CD to show Schnittke truly on a level with Shostakovich'
Mahler: Lieder recital
Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano)
'Christian Gerhaher presents a masterful programme of Mahler song'
Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen
Valencia Community Orchestra/Zubin Mehta
'This is the most exciting staging of Wagner's Ring cycle I have seen'
Takemitsu: Complete works for solo piano
Paul Crossley (piano)
'Paul Crossley seems an ideal interpreter of Takemitsu's music'
Spiritual Dimensions
Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet)
'Wadada Leo Smith's music is both invigorating and enjoyable'
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 24 & 25
Valerie Tryon (piano); London Symphony Orchestra/Robert Trory
'Valerie Tryon is extremely impressive in Mozart's concertos'
Wagner: Arias and duets from Lohengrin, Tannhäuser & Die Walküre
Petra Maria Schnitzer (soprano), Peter Seiffert (tenor)
'Seiffert and Schnitzer are among today's finest Wagnerians'
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