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The Irish mezzo studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin under Veronica Dunne before moving on to the Opera Studio at the Bavarian State Opera from 2016 to 2018. She is a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist for 2023-5, during which time she will debut at major recital venues including Wigmore Hall. She recently sang Wellgunde in Barrie Kosky’s new production of Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House and will make her role debut as Carmen at the 2024 Buxton Festival. Her programme takes an avian theme.

Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2021, the Canadian violinist has been described by The Times as ‘in a class of his own’. Here he joins with an American musician equally acclaimed as a soloist and collaborative pianist for a selection of substantial works from the 18th and 20th centuries.

The title of this cello and piano duo programme has a distinctly nocturnal ambience in which sit larger pieces by Debussy and Britten.

Rachmaninov’s world was turned completely upside down by the Great War. Severed from his roots, he fled Russia and began a career as a globetrotting pianist. His devilish set of variations, performed here by Bruce Liu – winner of the 2021 International Chopin Competition – embodies this nomadic life: written in Switzerland, premiered in America, based on a tune by Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini and infused with Rachmaninov’s own Russian style. Composers Erich Korngold and Béla Bartók were also forced by politics to leave their homes: both fled from fascism to the New World, and Korngold’s swashbuckling film score is practically a hymn to freedom. Bartók’s spectacular Concerto for Orchestra, meanwhile, is more than just a multi-coloured showcase, it’s a struggle between darkness and light, crowned by a mighty shout of joy.

If you enjoy Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony (No.9), you’re going to love his Eighth, which he wrote back home in the heart of Bohemia. Hymn tunes, birdsong and folk dances; village bands, summer sunsets and blazing triumph – they’re all here, in what might be the single happiest symphony by any great composer (and definitely one of the most tuneful). For guest conductor Eduardo Strausser, it’s a natural way to end a concert that positively glows with Central European sunshine. The award-winning violinist Liya Petrova steps into the limelight in Korngold’s soaring Violin Concerto – written in Hollywood by a composer with his heart in Vienna. And there’s a chance to discover a real neglected gem: the folk-inspired Suita Rustica by Vítězslava Kaprálová, who lit up Czech music between the wars.