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Research has shown that music can have a positive effect on mental health, and working with others on creative pursuits is one of the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ championed by the World Health Organisation (WHO). If you’re an adult experiencing mental health or well-being challenges, you are warmly invited to join musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for fun, creative music sessions to listen to and create music alongside professional musicians. Monthly sessions are evidence-based and designed to provide respite and improve mood, delivered by our specially trained musicians and Workshop Leaders. At each session, you’ll get the chance to meet professional musicians and work together with other participants to create brand-new pieces of music and songs. You’ll be supported to try out instruments and devise melodies, lyrics, rhythms and styles for your pieces, expressing your thoughts, feelings and emotions.

We would love to invite Disabled adults and their carers or support workers to take part in a series of music workshops this summer. Alongside musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, we will work together to create brand new pieces of music and explore orchestral music together.

Elgar’s Enigma Variations began as a parlour game, a series of musical portraits of the composer’s nearest and dearest. It grew into the warmest, tenderest and most stirring masterpiece in all of British music: who isn’t moved by the profound emotion of Nimrod? Few artists understand British music better than former English National Opera music director Martyn Brabbins, and tonight Enigma crowns an all-British programme that opens with the serenity of Vaughan Williams and stars another great champion of British music, pianist Mark Bebbington, in the Piano Concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss. It’s not heard all that often, but it’s an absolute knockout: an art deco blockbuster, written on the eve of the Second World War. The greatest piano concerto you’ve never heard? Judge for yourself…

Presented in association with CineConcerts, sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator returns to the Royal Albert Hall for a special 25th anniversary screening with live orchestra. Relive the legendary and five-time Academy Award-winning film on the big screen, with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra conducted by Justin Freer, the Philharmonia Chorus, and vocal soloist Clara Sanabras performing Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard’s Golden Globe-winning score live on stage.

As Hitler’s armies surrounded the city of Leningrad, and bombs rained down on a starving population, Dmitri Shostakovich sat down and – somehow – composed his Seventh Symphony. Written for massed battalions of musicians, this is music from the front line: a roar of defiance from an unbreakable city. You can hear it this afternoon conducted by Vasily Petrenko, whose recording of the piece was described by one critic as ‘devastating’. It’s a stupendous climax to a concert that’s all about struggle and resistance: whether it’s Sibelius defying Russian imperialism with a mighty hymn to his native Finland or the poet Walt Whitman’s pleas for tolerance, set to music by the exiled Kurt Weill. Singing them today is the fabulous British baritone Roderick Williams: a born communicator at the heart of a truly epic programme.

‘I am the new Bacchus, pressing out glorious wine for the human spirit’ declared Ludwig van Beethoven. True, he wasn’t known for his modesty – but until you’ve heard his incredible Seventh Symphony in full, heart-pounding flight, you’ve never known just how intoxicating music can be. This is music that demands total commitment, body and soul and we can expect the young British conductor Adam Hickox to raise the roof tonight. First, though, he joins the RPO’s own Principal Trumpet, Matthew Williams, in the delightfully operatic concerto by Beethoven’s great friend Hummel – and ventures deep into the dark heart of the German forest in the Overture to Weber’s supernatural shocker Der Freischütz. The perfect opener to an evening of music to set the pulse racing.

The mystic, the magician and the messenger - a parade of heavenly bodies demonstrate their powers as conductor Robert Ziegler leads the Orchestra in an adventure through space and time with Holst’s mighty symphonic suite, The Planets. Beforehand, Manu Martin’s Cosmic Rhapsody inspires child-like wonder in nature and science, and pianist Jean Yves-Thibaudet plays Gershwin irresistible I Got Rhythm Variations.

VE Day 80: The Party will celebrate a pivotal day in our modern history through an evening of music-led storytelling. Exactly 80 years on, it is the final major Second World War anniversary for the country to mark alongside those who lived through it; The Greatest Generation.

Experience the smash-hit Indian action epic and Oscar®-winner RRR with a live orchestra as part of our Film in Concert series. Join us for the world premiere of S. S. Rajamouli's modern masterpiece in concert, featuring the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra playing M. M. Keeravani's unforgettable score live on stage, conducted by Ben Pope. Director S. S. Rajamouli and composer M. M. Keeravani will be on stage for a pre-film talk as we celebrate the film.

Johan Dalene is one of the most important young violinists to have emerged on the international stage in recent years, having won the Sibelius Competition and then nominated as a member of the prestigious BBC New Generation Artist scheme.