Name: HANDEL Messiah
Start: 2025-11-25T19:00:00
Location: Westminster Abbey

Sophie Bevan

Andrew Nethsingha

Simon Ponsford

William Balkwill

Stuart O’Hara

Sinfonia Smith Square

It’s a work full of contrasts, from soaring lyricism and radiant emotion to a turbulently charged finale. Bringing this concerto to life is Charlie Lovell-Jones, guest leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, John Wilson’s award-winning Sinfonia of London, and soloist with orchestras including the BBC Philharmonic and English Chamber Orchestra.

The evening opens with Mark-Anthony Turnage’s A Jolly Good Knees-Up, a spirited burst of sharp rhythms, bold colour, and mischievous energy.

Rush Hour 5: Barber Violin Concerto

St John's Waterloo

Join us as we take to the seven seas in a hunt for the treasure of Chamber Music and enjoy experiencing the beauty of the instruments of the orchestra up a little closer. Together, we’ll find hidden gems all around Smith Square Hall…

You’ll experience different chamber works and ensembles – the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Gene Koshinski, Silvestre Revueltas and more…

Treasures of the Orchestra

Smith Square Hall

His new piece has been specially commissioned by FSO, supported by the Nigel Blake Celebration Fund, and is dedicated to the memory of Stephen Hicks, fellow composer and the orchestra’s former principal trumpet. 

Stephen Hicks’s “Your boundaries are the sky” explores a vast musical space, from whispered heights to subterranean depths, balancing weight and lightness as musical fragments emerge, collide and drift away. 

Written for the legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto is a virtuosic work that combines lyrical beauty and playful energy with moments of sardonic wit. 

Prokofiev, Nesbitt, Hicks, Respighi

The programme is a love letter to 20th-century song in all its forms. 

From the soaring romanticism of Alma Mahler and Richard Strauss to the bittersweet elegance of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim, this concert brings together worlds that rarely meet. 

You’ll hear music from beloved films and musicals alongside lush orchestral arrangements of song cycles and solo pieces all carefully curated to tell a story that is moving, varied and richly expressive.

Fantasia Orchestra with Niamh O’Sullivan

Members of the Abbey Choir along with the renowned orchestral musicians of AAM bring to life this sacred oratorio, one of the best known and most frequently performed works of choral music.