Composer

As Christmas grows close, step into the warm glow of choral splendour as the SCO Chorus fills Greyfriars Kirk with seasonal music to captivate, calm and inspire you.

A Ceremony of Carols

Greyfriars Kirk

The theme behind this seasonal programme is the Virgin Mary, whether celebrating her own divinity (in the Votive Mass written by Byrd), or in the context of the birth of Christ (in Tallis’ epic Missa Puer natus).

Mother and Child

Smith Square Hall

A French conductor and violinist with Spanish roots, Sonia Ben-Santamaria has forged an original career at the crossroads of artistic excellence and transmission.

Christmas Concert

Le Sonambule

Salle Georges Brassens

Opéra Comédie

When the young Benjamin Britten sat down to write his first symphony, he used melodies and themes he had written as a child. Perhaps that is why he called the symphony the Simple Symphony . Regardless, it is music that is easy to get carried away by, with catchy melodies and a good dose of musical humor.

EPSG:4326

Sokhiev & Beethoven's 6th.

DR Koncerthuset

Join Music Director Andreas Delfs in the intimate setting of Beston Hall on the campus of Nazareth University for our popular Sunday Matinees at Naz Series!

Mozart & Britten

Glazer Music Performance Center

Experience an evening of orchestral brilliance with a program that spans centuries of musical innovation. The concert opens with George Frideric Handel’s Water Music Suite No. 1, a regal masterpiece brimming with baroque elegance. Contemporary composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s Quark Dances—a dynamic and imaginative work that fuses science and sound—adds a bold, modern voice to the evening. Finally, the program culminates with Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations, a luminous and evocative song cycle that brings Rimbaud’s vivid poetry to life through Britten’s expressive, shimmering orchestration. Don’t miss this captivating journey through time and tone.

Radiance

Town Hall Seattle

When the winter darkness is at its thickest,Norrland Operaopen the gates for this year's Classic Christmas with the Norrlandsoperans Symphony Orchestra, two magical evenings – December 12 and 13 – packed with ear candy for those who want to get in the Christmas spirit just in time for Epiphany. Everything from English choral gems, classical solo singing by Mozart and Sibelius to beloved Swedish Christmas music is on offer.

Classic Christmas with the Norrlandsoperans Symphony Orchestra

Norrlandsoperan

Bask in the glow of winter’s light with a radiant program of music that shimmers like freshly fallen snow. New Century Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Girls Chorus unite in a performance that radiates warmth and wonder. In a season of reflection and renewal, let this concert be a moment of serenity and shared joy to brighten the longest nights.

In Winter’s Glow

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Tiburon, CA

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church

A work of dark, searching grandeur, Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony gathers sumptuous themes from his ballet music, revised in the postwar shadow of Stalin’s Russia. Britten’s Violin Concerto, a searing response to the Spanish Civil War, features James Ehnes, “a flawless technician and a serious, ever-perceptive musician” (The Guardian). Providing contrast is Debussy’s dreamy and sensuous prelude.

Noseda Conducts Debussy & Prokofiev 4

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The programme combines settings of the Song of Songs and its evocation of a luscious, fertile landscape by Spanish composers of the Renaissance, such as Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and Tomás Luis de Victoria, with the beauty of Britten’s Five Flower Songs, alongside two new commissions from Leo Chadburn and Amy Bryce.

The Marian Consort: The Language of Flowers

Milton Court Concert Hall

A Thursday concert that moves from full cello focus with soloist Senja Rummukainen to a playful parade of the entire Malmö Symphony Orchestra's instruments, one by one. 

Elgars Cello Concerto

Malmö Concert Hall

The Macmillan Carol Concert returns this December with an evening of joyful music, stirring performances, and festive spirit – all in support of Macmillan Cancer Support.

With a glittering line-up of musicians and special guests, this much-loved event promises heart and harmony in equal measure, making it the perfect way to start your Christmas season.

The Macmillan Carol Concert

Cadogan Hall 

When the first candle burns on the Advent wreath and bright strings of lights begin to glow in the windows, when the calendar doors are gradually opened and the kitchen smells of cinnamon stars, gingerbread, and almond cookies – then it's Advent. And, of course, familiar Christmas melodies also put us in the mood for the festive season. That's why the MDR Children's Choir is touring with concerts, especially in the run-up to Christmas. For many years, it has been a tradition for the MDR Children's Choir to awaken anticipation of Christmas in its broadcast area with cheerful, contemplative songs.

A Thousand Stars

Dreieinigkeitskirche Zeulenroda

Film music on the concert organ, how does that work together? Anna Lapwood herself says: "In recent years, I have increasingly stopped defining music by genres, and started thinking about what music brings joy to me and my listeners. The boundaries between genres are so flexible anyway, and it's really fun to experiment with blurring these boundaries even more." You can feel this joy in this concert as well, when she plays her transcriptions from the films "The Da Vinci Code," "Interstellar," and "Pirates of the Caribbean" (Hans Zimmer) and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (Alan Menken). In addition, classics such as the famous Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach, which was turned into "Ave Maria" by Charles Gounod, and Benjamin Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" from the opera "Peter Grimes" can be heard, as well as new works written for Anna Lapwood.

Interstellar

Palace of Culture

As one of the most original and prolific composers of the 20th century, Benjamin Britten left behind a particularly extensive and rich oeuvre. In 1962/63, he composed a "Symphony for Cello and Orchestra" for Mstislav Rostropovich, distinguished by the equal treatment of solo and tutti, which unfold in virtuoso interplay. Britain, in this case Scotland, became a source of inspiration for the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, whose Scottish Symphony  grew out of a lasting travel experience in the Nordic landscape and culture and remains one of his major works. Highly Romantic scenery is brought to life, carried by orchestral sounds rich in form and color.

Symphony Concert III

Bebelplatz

"The Art of Fugue" is, quite bluntly put, a collection of compositions on a theme whose possibilities are systematically explored. Here, Johann Sebastian Bach not only employs various types of fugues (simple fugue, counter-fugue, double fugue, triple fugue, mirror fugue, canon) and their traditional forms (inversion, augmentation, and reduction), but also other, more general musical means. Under Bach's hands, the project of a practical teaching tool attained an unexpected quality and, despite all its erudition, remains pure music of infectious vitality and typically Bachian expressiveness. 

True touchstones

Bochumer Symphoniker

Across the Sea

Warren Woods Middle School

We return to the Wimbledon International Festival, conducted by our Principal Bassoon Robin O’Neill.

Enjoy a radiant programme celebrating the refined, sensuous world of Maurice Ravel in his 150th birthday year, with two highlights from the composer’s catalogue: Tombeau de Couperin and Pavane pour une infante défunte.

We’re joined by star violist Timothy Ridout in Britten’s Lachrymae, a piece that showcases the deep emotional depth of the instrument.

Wimbledon International Music Festival: Tertis Memorial Concert

Wimbledon High School

The COP's second concert features a different set of the three B's!  We hope you enjoy these rarely played works by Britten and Barberas well as a favorite Bach Concerto performed by Amaury Morales.

The Other Three B's

Rodef Shalom Congregation

Under Joseph Stalin’s brutal regime, being an artist meant extreme censorship, unimaginable pressure, and life-or-death stakes. No composer of the era embodied this more than Dmitri Shostakovich, and in his Symphony No. 10—the first of his symphonies to be composed after Stalin’s death—his newfound artistic freedom unleashed an explosive torrent of earth-shaking emotional power. Music Director Juraj Valčuha leads this extraordinary darkness-to-light journey, and Baiba Skride heats up Jones Hall with Britten’s fiery Violin Concerto.

Journey to Light: Valčuha Conducts Shostakovich 10

Jones Hall

Principal Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra Edward Gardner leads Tchaikovsky’s ever-popular Symphony No. 5. With soaring melodies, roaring brass, and balletic grace, the Fifth is a wild ride of heart-on-sleeve emotions. Also on the program: Pablo Ferrández makes his NSO debut in Lutosławski’s innovative Cello Concerto.

Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Ferrández plays Lutosławski

Kennedy Center

The Turn of The Screw is a chilling psychological thriller based on Henry James's novella. The story follows a young governess who, caring for two children at a remote country house, becomes convinced they are being haunted. GRAMMY-winning Michael Christie conducts this double-cast production, performed with the SFCM Orchestra. 

SFCM Opera Presents: 'The Turn of the Screw'

San Francisco Conservatory of Music

For 60 years, the Musicians from Marlboro touring program has brought memorable performances from Vermont’s legendary chamber music school and festival to national audiences. The first of three Marlboro touring ensembles this season is led by Lysander Trio violinist Itamar Zorman. Their program features Britten’s Phantasy for string trio and oboe, his first work to gain major international recognition, as well as Shostakovich’s introspective, sardonic, and elegiac String Quartet No. 8, a work dedicated to the victims of war and fascism. The program concludes with the youthful brilliance of the 16-year-old Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quintet in A Major.

Musicians from Marlboro I

 Benjamin Franklin Hall

An absolute highlight of our anniversary season – this concert with music whose orchestral power and splendor of sound, along with its breathtakingly virtuosic violin performance, will give the audience a rollercoaster of emotions and make the Meistersingerhalle vibrate. The Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten, the greatest British composer of the 20th century, is a great neo-Romantic work. Written in the summer of 1939, on the eve of World War II, it is permeated by dark forebodings and visions of horror, but also filled with those positive creative forces that transform great works of art into a metaphor for overcoming. Gustav Mahler, too, was a visionary and, in the all-encompassing stylistic diversity of his music at the time, a prophet of postmodernism. As in all his symphonies, in his "First" of 1888, he looks in two directions: back, full of nostalgic longing for the lost paradises of a good old time, and visionary ahead into a vague future—sometimes filled with fear by apocalyptic horrors, sometimes intoxicated by a boundlessly optimistic faith in the future.

Britten's Violin Concerto & Mahler's Titan

Meistersinger Hall

Making her debut with the TSO, Yura Lee solos on not one, but two instruments! In a rare turn, Lee will perform both the Walton Viola Concerto and Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending on violin on a program of contrasts.

Strauss and Britten

Linda Ronstadt Music Hall

Join the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dinis Sousa on a journey through a dramatic landscape. Eldbjørg Hemsing is the soloist in Hillborg’s wild Violin Concerto. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony is joyfully captivating.

High above the Sea with Hemsing

Göteborgs Symfoniker

Salzburg-London Piano Trio Collaboration

Mozarteum Foundation

Join us for a program of four journeys spanning one hundred years. We voyage to the sea and back in Benjamin Britten’s stunning interludes from his opera Peter Grimes, we encounter the afterlife as envisioned by Richard Strauss, we hope not to turn to stone with Stacy Garrop’s arresting Becoming Medusa, and we will be captivated by Igor Stravinsky’s depiction of love, struggle, and, ultimately, joy.

Orchestral Odysseys

The Forum Auditorium

Dark, sobering, and wrought with tension, yet infused with hope and light, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem reflects on war, across all generations and continents. With the words of poet and soldier Wilfred Owen set alongside traditional Latin texts, Britten’s call for reconciliation has been called a contemporary masterpiece. The SLSO is joined by three world-renowned vocalists, the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and The St. Louis Children’s Choirs to create one of the most expansive ranges of emotion and sound imaginable.

Britten’s War Requiem

Powell Hall

Dalia Stasevska leads a program honoring the Ukrainian people. Bohdana Frolyak’s Let There Be Light reflects on the Ukrainian conflict, and Joshua Bell is soloist in Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto, a work “both heart-wrenching and uplifting,” Bell says, “as gripping and relevant today as when composed during WWII.” The program is bookended by other responses to war: Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem.

Joshua Bell Plays de Hartmann

David Geffen Hall

PCMS delights in highlighting the Jasper Quartet, one of today’s preeminent American string quartets which also happens to call Philadelphia home. Hailed as being “expressively assured and beautifully balanced” (Gramophone), the ensemble is joined for this concert by Julietta Curenton, a flutist known for her “bold and dramatically characterized playing” (Dallas Morning News) and a “tone that draws in one’s ear with sounds and ideas that simply cannot be resisted” (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Jasper Quartet Julietta Curenton, flute

KONTRAST - Folkehuset Absalon

Folkehuset Absalon

Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" is not just music, it is a moving message of peace. Anyone who has ever been to Coventry will understand why: This deeply moving work, which inextricably links horror and hope, destruction and new beginnings, emerged in 1962 from the rubble of the cathedral destroyed in 1940. Britten's sensitive, profoundly human musical language makes this monumental oratorio an experience that leaves no one untouched.
Under the direction of Asher Fisch, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra, an outstanding international ensemble of soloists, and the renowned WDR Radio Choir – making their first appearance here – will join forces for this season's highlight. Together with the Choir of the Städtischer Musikverein, the Clara Schumann Youth Choir, and the Children's and Youth Choir of the Akademie für Musiktheater, you can expect a performance whose emotional resonance will stay with you for a long time.

War Requiem

Tonhalle Düsseldorf

Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2

Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts

The Miracle

Empress Theatre

Britten’s mysterious and moving Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes powerfully interpret an outcast fisherman’s tragic end amid turbulent seas. Buffalo-born Robert Paterson’s colorful Triple Concerto compellingly examines Earth’s fragility, while Beethoven’s gentle Sixth Symphony portrays a charming countryside turn, evoking deep relaxation and contemtment.

Beethoven’s Pastoral

Kleinhans Music Hall

Britten’s haunting Four Sea Interludes and Elgar’s elegant Cello Concerto set the stage for Beethoven’s Fifth — a sweeping emotional journey that begins with four of the most iconic notes in classical music. Conducted by Peter Oundjian, principal conductor and featuring violist Wanxinyi Huang ’24MM ’25MMA.

Britten, Elgar, and Beethoven’s Fifth

Yale University

The Library’s Autumn Concert Series takes place on Fridays from September 5 to October 31. Each concert will begin at 1 p.m. in the Winn Room. Doors will open 15 minutes prior to the performance. On October 24, we will have Sophie Webber on the cello.

Sophie Webber

Coronado Public Library

From its atmospheric beginning, Le Silence des Sirènes evokes vivid imagery of ill-fated ships on top of great, swelling waves: the score is alive with crashing percussion and warning brass interjections, the enigmatic sirens’ song provided by Faustine de Monès. Unsuk Chin drew upon several classical sources for the work, including Homer, Joyce and – most notably – Kafka, whose short story gave the work its name.

Schubert’s Great Symphony

The Bridgewater Hall

Hear the UK premiere of Hallé Featured Composer, Unsuk Chin’s shimmering Le Silence des Sirènes, ‘a dazzling reflection on Homer’s formidable femmes fatales’ (Financial Times). From its atmospheric beginning, Le Silence des Sirènes evokes vivid imagery of ill-fated ships on top of great, swelling waves: the score is alive with crashing percussion and warning brass interjections, the enigmatic sirens’ song provided by Faustine de Monès. Unsuk Chin drew upon several classical sources for the work, including Homer, Joyce and – most notably – Kafka, whose short story gave the work its name. Britten’s Four Sea Interludes opens the programme: orchestral ‘scene changes’ from his opera Peter Grimes conveying the changing mood of the storytelling, but always with an atmospheric undercurrent of foreboding. Schubert’s majestic Symphony No.9 will round off the evening, with conductor Elena Schwarz showing us exactly why it’s known as ‘The Great’.

The Hallé – Schubert’s Great Symphony

Based on the novella by Henry James that tells the story of a young, inexperienced governess sent to a country house to care for two children, whom she is gradually convinced have been corrupted by the ghosts haunting the house. While maintaining melodic vocal lines, Benjamin Britten’s alternating themes and keys represent the “screw tightening”. The piece leaves us with the question: Were there ever really ghosts or was it all in her head? Does the governess’ desire to do her job and her own anxieties lead her into madness, or is she truly fighting for the souls of the children in her charge?

Britten’s The Turn of the Screw

Pacific Opera Victoria

Described by The Guardian as 'a handpicked supergroup', whose rare 'live performances are a special occasion', the orchestra will be joined for this performance by British tenor Laurence Kilsby and British horn player Christopher Parkes.

Sinfonia of London: Serenade

Barbican Centre

Since the release of their recorded trilogy of Paul Stanhope’s quartets, the ASQ has proudly championed this beloved Australian composer, whose first string quartet, Elegies and Dances, bristles with rhythmic vitality.

Australian String Quartet: Convergence

ACO On The Pier

A toast to defiance! Nothing inspires creativity more than the will to resist. Take, for example, when Josef Suk writes variations on the secret national anthem of the Czechs on the eve of World War I. Or when Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach lets loose in his D minor concerto, while his employer, Frederick II, prefers galant tones. Further examples are the serenade with which Hugo Wolf responded to the failure of his overture to the opera "Penthesilea": a Mediterranean serenade with the motto "just don't let yourself be defeated." And the Opus 4 of the frustrated college student Benjamin Britten: His "Simple Symphony" consists of musical snippets he composed when he was 10 or 12 years old...

1st Castle Concert

Sondershausen Castle

Guest performance in Weißenfels »Back from vacation«

Weißenfels Cultural Center

Regularly voted one of Britain’s favourite pieces of classical music, Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia is at the heart of this fabulous programme of English music. John Wilson is in demand at the highest level across the globe, having conducted many of the world's finest orchestras over the past 30 years. Britten’s Serenade is one of his best loved works and the programme ends with the musical fireworks of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra. Add in lush music from two other fine English composers in Howell and Delius and we have a wonderful programme of truly gorgeous music.

John Wilson Conducts The Tallis Fantasia

Perth Concert Hall

This high-octane program celebrates the magnetic style of Tony Award-winning choreographer Justin Peck—where ballet meets pop, pattern and pulse.

Peck: Miami in Motion

Ziff Ballet Opera House

Embark on a maritime adventure with the Calgary Phil as the Orchestra performs three sea-inspired works. Yue Bao conducts Four Sea Interludes from Britten's opera Peter Grimes, featuring musical portraits of the ocean dominating life in an English coastal village. Complementing Britten's vision is Vaughan Williams' mystical epic for soprano, baritone, and chorus, setting texts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

Symphonic Seas

Arts Commons

Richard Goode Plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

The last time the affable Andrew Manze led the Minnesota Orchestra, he turned to the audience and said, “There are three kinds of conductors. Those who can count, and those who can’t.” (Yes, three—that’s his joke!) It’s clear that he belongs in the first category, so we’ve asked him back to conduct Beethoven’s seminal Fifth Symphony and a multi-faceted piano concerto by Anna Clyne.

Beethoven Fifth Symphony

Orchestra Hall

For a showcase of all the colours in an orchestra’s palette, this CBSO concert is a great place to start. Benjamin Britten’s famous orchestral guide began life in 1945 as the soundtrack to an instructional film, but its pitch perfect spotlighting of each instrument, all based around Henry Purcell’s Rondeau from the play Abdelazar, has never dated. On a more intimate scale, Mozart’s much-loved Flute and Harp Concerto gives two CBSO Principal players a chance to shine. Composed in 1778 for the flute-playing Duke of Guines and his harpist daughter, it wasn’t exactly Mozart’s most cherished commission, as he admitted to disliking both solo instruments. Nonetheless he delivered it in style, its graceful interplay showing Mozart at his most charming and lyrical.

City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Royal Concert Hall Nottingham

Transatlantic Sounds

Prinzregententheater

In the antiphon "O Radiant Dawn," which serves as the theme for this Chorage program, Scottish composer James MacMillan moves from the delicate touch of a ray of light to the rich spectrum of colors of the ever-awakening morning. In MacMillan's "A New Song," a setting of Psalm 96, the choral voices, singing a new day to the Lord, build upon a sustained pedal point, which arguably expresses the life-giving foundation of the earth, where the "primordial light" dwells (heard in Mahler's setting). Organist Stephan Pollhammer unfolds the splendor of daybreak with Reger's powerful Choral Fantasia on the Morning Star.

Chorage® #2 A Radiant Dawn

Pfarrkirche Salzburg-Itzling

Starting this season, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra's program will feature a new, colorful highlight: Blue Week. This festival replaces the former Academy Concerts and combines unique works and programs while showcasing the special qualities of the orchestra's musicians. In this first edition, they will make metamorphoses of all kinds audible – in this concert, humans are transformed into animals, oboe notes into alienated soundscapes, and fantasies into sonic reality.

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Starting this season, there will be a new colorful accent in the program of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra: THE BLUE WEEK. The festival replaces the former Academy Concerts and combines unique works and programs on the one hand and showcases the special qualities of our orchestra musicians on the other. In the first edition, they make metamorphoses of all kinds audible - in this concert, people are musically transformed into animals, oboe notes into alienated soundscapes and fantasies into sounding reality.

2. Blue Concert METAMORPHOSES

She is one of the greats in her field: When Janine Jansen takes up violin and bow, she captivates audiences. One of her favorite violin concertos is Benjamin Britten's – and one of her favorite partners, of course, is the London Symphony Orchestra. This was already clear 15 years ago, when the Dutch violinist recorded the visionary concerto with England's first orchestra.

London Symphony Orchestra / Janine Jansen / Sir Antonio Pappano

Opus130 conducted by Leonard Slatkin

Manhattan School of Music

Guest performance in Arnstadt »Back from vacation«

Theater im Schlossgarten

All of the works on this concert pay homage to great predecessors. Heitor Villa-Lobos’s set of Bachianas Brasileiras is a tribute to Bach, transformed through the lens of his South American roots. The lush and evocative Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 has become famous for its beautiful, swoon-worthy melody and echoes the famous "Air" from Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3.

Autumn Romance for Strings

Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral

Britten & Elgar

Birmingham Symphony Hall

Malvern Theatres

Everyone is strangely drawn to Billy Budd, the handsome sailor. Conscripted to fight on a warship where the authorities are nervous of protest and mutiny, Billy Budd is a calming, shining presence.

But after the ship’s policeman unexpectedly makes a false accusation against him, Billy cannot find the words to defend himself. When an actual crime is committed, the hastily arranged trial that follows is a very warped version of ‘justice’.

Billy Budd

Wilton's Music Hall

From Britten's sparkling melodies to a thrilling world premiere of New Orleans' own Jay Weigel's Violin Concerto showcasing LPO Associate Concertmaster Hannah Yim, Price's vibrant celebration of African American musical heritage, and Miguel del Aguila's passionate tango, this program is packed with excitement.

Northshore Classics: Weigel Violin Concerto

Greater Covington Center

Weigel Violin Concerto

New Marigny Theatre

Inselmusik 2025 brings together experienced and young chamber musicians who will immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the island of Rügen for three days of music-making. Eckart Runge, former cellist of the legendary Artemis Quartet, and his duo partner Jacques Ammon will lead the festival and also present their own transcendent programs. The young musicians will have the opportunity to showcase their work in portrait concerts.

The Schubert Quintet

Chapel of the Boldevitz Manor

Coffee Concert No. 1 »Back from Vacation«

Volkshaus Jena

Driven into a corner, disowned by a community who blame him for an accident that killed his apprentice, after the first one died at sea, because they'd run out of water – Peter Grimes is a tragic figure, at the mercy of a narrow-minded rural community’s bigotry. Keith Warner, with a passion for psychodrama, draws a haunting portrait of a fishing community, portraying people thrown together in a claustrophobic world. Ellen Orford finds the jersey she knitted the second apprentice washed up on the beach. With the people baying for Grimes‘ blood, Balstrode, his only friend, tells him to take the boat out, and sink it.

Peter Grimes

Oper Frankfurt

We can often understand music even better when we hear the words it is based on. In a delightful blend of concert and reading, the Studio Orchestra Duisburg and narrator Natalia Hüskens juxtapose musical and lyrical pairs of works—concrete, as in the artistic encounter between Gabriel Fauré and Paul Verlaine, or Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Ives, but also imaginary ones. Antonín Dvořák drew inspiration for his "Czech Suite" from the sounds of his homeland, while Mendelssohn Bartholdy found it for his "Hebrides Overture" in the magnificent natural scenery of Scotland. What would the appropriate poems sound like? The first serenade concert provides the answer.

1. Serenade Concert

Hamborn Abbey

Dalia Stasevska conducts music that, in different ways, gives voice to the longing for freedom in times of war. Thomas de Hartmann, Aaron Copland, and Benjamin Britten composed their works during World War II, while Bohdana Frolyak wrote hers amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. American violinist Joshua Bell is the soloist in Hartmann’s Violin Concerto.

Dalia Stasevska Joshua Bell

Oslo Concert Hall

Rising Star from Istanbul

Istanbul-born pianist İlyun Bürkev is only 16 years old and already a real star in her home country. She is now studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and has won numerous prizes at international competitions, most recently at »Jeune Chopin« in Switzerland. Together with the most important youth orchestra from her home town, the Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, she will perform Edvard Grieg’s sonorous and captivating piano concerto at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. The orchestra has already performed with greats such as Murray Perahia and Alice Sara Ott and plays in major concert halls such as the Vienna and Berlin Konzerthaus – »technically absolutely convincing«, according to the Tagesspiegel.

Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra / İlyun Bürkev / Cem Mansur

Say & Altstaedt

Peter-Paul-Kirche

St. Marienkirche

“I think I have found there the beginning of my ‘Scottish’ Symphony,” Mendelssohn wrote in 1829 after visiting the ruins of Edinburgh’s Holyrood Chapel. At once dramatic and lighthearted, the resulting symphony is a vibrant musical postcard of Mendelssohn’s travels. Conductor Stephanie Childress returns to lead this work alongside Saint-Säens’s melodious First Cello Concerto — featuring superstar cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason — and Britten’s Simple Symphony, a delightful piece the composer based on tunes he had written as a child.

Composer

Benjamin Britten

Events

Upcoming events

21 - 22 Dec, 2025

A Ceremony of Carols · Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Dec 23, 2025

A Thousand Stars · MDR-Sinfonieorchester

Jan 18, 2026

A Tribute to Benjamin Britten · Münchner Rundfunkorchester

Jan 22, 2026

Llŷr Williams: Britten & British Contemporaries · Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

22 - 25 Jan, 2026

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alisa Weilerstein / Alan Gilbert · Elbphilharmonie

Past events

21 - 22 Dec, 2025

A Ceremony of Carols · Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Dec 20, 2025

Mother and Child · Sinfonia Smith Square

About

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