Name: New Year’s Eve Gala 2025: Magic and Enchantment
Start: 2025-12-31T18:00:00
Location: Royal Concert Hall Nottingham

Konya Kanneh-Mason

Nicholas Kok

Sinfonia Viva

Join us for Melodic Moments at Derby’s Museum of Making – a relaxed and uplifting afternoon of live music performed by Sinfonia Viva.

These informal concerts offer a friendly, welcoming space to enjoy beautiful music in a way that’s accessible to all. Designed with inclusivity in mind, they’re especially supportive for people living with dementia, their carers, and anyone who may find traditional concert settings challenging.

Melodic Moments – December 2025

Museum of Making, Derby

For many, Handel’s timeless masterpiece, Messiah, is the sound of Christmas.

Come and hear this incredible 300-year-old music amongst the beauty and atmospheric surroundings of a candlelit Derby Cathedral.

Handel’s Messiah by Candlelight

Derby Cathedral

Join us for a dazzling New Year’s Eve Gala, a Nottingham tradition for nearly 30 years.

New Year’s Eve Gala 2025: Magic and Enchantment

Royal Concert Hall Nottingham

Nottingham’s famous Kanneh-Mason family are our Patrons, but this performance of Beethoven’s ‘Triple Concerto’ is the first time that three of them will have appeared together with Sinfonia Viva. Written around the time of the Eroica Symphony it’s an adventurous musical hybrid, playfully combining elements of the piano trio with the concerto and presenting the soloists as a collective force against the grandeur of the orchestra.

The rest of the programme is a feast of Germanic and British orchestral and choral music. Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture launches the concert with both the Masonic solemnity and the comedic high spirits of his opera, whilst the pioneering Emilie Mayer’s Overture in D Minor is an example of her taut and dramatic writing at its best. The two choral items form a fascinating contrast: Brahms’s dramatic cantata Schicksalslied (‘Song of Fate’) was inspired by Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem concerning the Greek mythical titan Hyperion, and the contrast it makes between the blissful lives of the Immortals and the restless existence of human beings, buffeted by fate.

Sinfonia Viva with Braimah, Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason

This concert is your chance to hear some of the most famous classical music ever written, live in Derby.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons depicts the passing of the year in evocative string music, from a barking dog in spring to an icy storm of winter. It takes a special violinist to bring it to life, and we have our own, Sophie Rosa, to perform it for you.

If that’s not enough Baroque’n’roll, we’ve also got Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 3 – with its second movement also known as the Air on a G String in a later adaptation. And for Baroque (coronation) anthems, we’re joined by Derby Cathedral Choir for music celebrating the coronation of King George II in 1727. Or, as you might know Handel’s Zadok The Priest, the music crowning Paris St Germain, Real Madrid and Manchester City as the official anthem of the UEFA Champions League.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

The finale of this concert at Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall is a brilliantly imaginative response to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from Argentina’s king of tango nuevo, Astor Piazzolla.

Part of a set of six concertos presented by Bach to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in 1721, The Third Brandenburg Concerto achieved widespread popularity and later became known to millions through its use as the theme tune for the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow for many years. Equally admired, his Concerto for Two Violins, weaves expressive lines between the two soloists in a captivating dialogue with the orchestra.

The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires

And now for something completely different. Our series of intimate afternoon concerts continues with the duo of Section Principal Flute, Rachel Holt, and regular guest harpist Lucy Nolan. This combination of instruments makes for a particularly ethereal and otherworldly sound – great taking a pause from your day and letting the sounds wash over you.

We have a combination of music written especially for flute and harp, and arrangements of well-known pieces, with Rachel and Lucy providing insights into the composers and music throughout the performance. You might not have heard of Pearl Chertok, Jacques Ibert or Marc Bethomieu, but they really were harp specialists and knew how to write for the instrument. But for more familiar sounds we have flute and harp arrangements of Chopin’s famous Minute Waltz and Ashokan Farewell by American folk musician Jay Ungar, based on a Scottish lament.

Flute & Harp

The Museum of Making

Join us for a celebration of the musical legacy of the Holst family – both Gustav and his exceptionally talented and influential daughter, Imogen.

Imogen worked with Benjamin Britten to establish the longstanding Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk alongside her distinguished composing career. Tonight’s highlights are the folk and baroque–inspired Variations on Loth to Depart and the spectacular but rarely heard Festival Anthem, performed with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir.

From Gustav we have his St Paul’s Suite. Like Imogen’s Variations on Loth to Depart it’s based on English folk music, but it’s much more boisterous and dense – like the musical equivalent of eating a chocolate cake.

The Holsts: Father & Daughter

Hear one of the UK’s best young horn players, Sarah Pennington, perform Brahms’ celebrated Horn Trio alongside our leader Sophie Rosa and pianist Ian Buckle. Sarah joined us as Section Principal Horn in 2025, having been joint principal horn of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. We’re excited to be able to showcase her skills in this concert.

One of relatively few pieces composed for horn, violin and piano, Brahms composed the Trio in response to the death of his mother. With a movement marked ‘sorrowful’ and the horn’s melancholic sound fully realised, it evokes time spent in nature, particularly the Black Forest.

Brahms’ Horn Trio

Is there an English sound we can all agree on? Of course not. But at least we can celebrate the music of English composers and how they have depicted the country over time. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending is enduringly popular as a portrait of rural England. But it was written amongst military manoeuvres preparing for World War I and so must be heard as much as a heartbreaking piece about loss as it is some depiction of bucolic Albion. Our leader, Sophie Rosa, is our violin soloist. If you’ve heard Sophie before you know what a treat you’re in for, and if you haven’t then you really wouldn’t want to miss this performance

We also have music by two composers who bookend the idea of English classical music. Henry Purcell wrote wild, emotive music for both the palaces and backstreets of early 17th century London. Edward Elgar is the composer we associate with pomp and circumstance and the rigour of Empire. But actually no – listen to Elgar’s Serenade for Strings and you can hear the same raw emotion of Purcell. Maybe the English aren’t so straight laced after all!