Classical Season Preview 2024-25: UK
Jack Pepper
Friday, September 6, 2024
What are the most exciting concerts and operas to look forward to over the coming season across the UK? Jack Pepper is your guide
Aurora Orchestra’s immersive performance from memory of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony at Printworks, London, in 2023 – a taste of what’s to come in the new season
Academy of Ancient Music
Hot on the heels of its 50th-anniversary season, the period-instrument orchestra presents two mythological masterpieces of the Baroque in October: Charpentier’s Actéon and Rameau’s Pygmalion will be performed in concert in Cambridge and London. Then, to mark the festive season, the orchestra joins forces with Tenebrae for Handel’s Messiah.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
In October the orchestra accompanies the popular history podcast The Rest Is History live, with hosts Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook exploring the lives and times of Mozart and Beethoven. November opens with Anastasia Kobekina performing Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C.
Aurora Orchestra
Gaelic music and the Highlands inspire the season opening, with a world premiere for composer Donald Grant, who weaves together original songs and folk melodies. In October, the orchestra continues its signature by-heart series with Stravinsky’s 1945 The Firebird suite performed without sheet music in an Orchestral Theatre presentation, with commentary from presenter Tom Service, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. They’ll also take the piece on tour in Switzerland later in the month.
Bach Choir
Handel’s Messiah can be heard in December, with a performance at Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre (where Handel himself presented some of his other oratorios in 1733).
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Stephen Hough joins Principal Conductor Ryan Bancroft to open the season with Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, while music by Grace Williams makes a welcome appearance on the programme in November with the folk-inspired overture Hen Walia. Schools from across Wales join the orchestra for a mass carol singalong in Swansea and Wrexham in December.
BBC Philharmonic
The season starter, falling as it does on the 150th anniversary of his birth, celebrates Holst with his The Planets, the cosmic theme continuing with its pairing, Ablaze the Moon (2023) by Grace-Evangeline Mason. Later concert themes include Mischief and Magic (cue Stravinsky’s Petrushka and music by Betsy Jolas) and A Hero’s Life (Richard Strauss and a UK premiere for Anna Clyne).
BBC Symphony Orchestra
January 2025 sees the UK premiere of the late Kaija Saariaho’s final masterpiece, Hush, a BBC co-commission. Before that, and showcasing the versatility of the BBC ensembles, the orchestra accompanies highlights from the hit BBC TV series Wild Isles in a live screening, conducted and presented by series composer George Fenton.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
It will be interesting to see if this ensemble continues experiencing a leap in young audience members as it did last season, when under-26s and students made up one in four audience members in the Thursday Night series. Ryan Wigglesworth enters his third season as Chief Conductor and continues his survey of Elgar’s major works with The Dream of Gerontius. Plus, there are collaborations with the Huddersfield Choral Society and choirs from Edinburgh and Glasgow universities, two percussion concertos with Colin Currie and a world premiere for Helen Grime.
BBC Singers
October sees them celebrate their centenary in a star-studded concert at London’s Barbican, performing music linked with their history and a world premiere by composer-in-association Roderick Williams. Among those joining them for the celebrations are the BBC SO, Bob Chilcott, Owain Park and Anna Lapwood. Later, they mark Remembrance with a programme titled Requiem Fragments (featuring Barber, Tavener and more) and celebrate Christmas with festive music from around the world, joining forces with Abel Selaocoe.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
The CBSO’s latest year is dubbed A Season of Joy, with more than a hundred performances including five premieres (watch out for the world premiere of Héloïse Werner’s work for orchestra and soprano), a podium return from Sir Mark Elder after more than two decades, and guest artists including Nicky Spence and Soweto Kinch.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Following Kirill Karabits’s departure, the orchestra welcomes Mark Wigglesworth as Chief Conductor and Chloé van Soeterstède as Principal Guest Conductor. Holst 150 is celebrated with a special October concert featuring his Cotswolds Symphony, Invocation and excerpts from The Planets, while January sees the marvellously titled Viennese Whirls concert, in which The Blue Danube is paired with Berg’s Violin Concerto (soloist Alena Baeva).
Bridgewater Hall
Featured among the 250 or so concerts this year are Max Richter in November (on his first world tour); screenings of The Holiday and Love Actually with live music for the festive season; Katia and Marielle Labèque with Debussy, Ravel and Glass in April; and young pianist Tom Borrow performing Franck in May.
Britten Sinfonia
In November, Max Richter’s The Four Seasons Recomposed comes to Suffolk and Norfolk, and the ensemble joins forces with jazz legend Tim Garland and his trio in London and Cambridge for what is billed as the most ambitious project of his career.
Cadogan Hall
With 2024 its 20th-anniversary year, the hall continues hosting the finest ensembles from abroad in the Zurich International Orchestra Series. Expect the Lviv National PO of Ukraine and Tokyo’s Yomiuri Nippon SO (October), the National Youth Orchestra of Germany joined by Wayne Marshall for Rhapsody in Blue (January), and tangos from the Buenos Aires SO of Colón Opera (May).
City of London Sinfonia
The orchestra returns to Smith Square Hall (formerly St John’s Smith Square) this autumn with Patterns of Nature, a three-part series co-curated with three environmental experts to explore music and climate. Its November finale features Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde introduced by Helen Anahita Wilson, transdisciplinary researcher and composer-in-residence at Chelsea Physic Garden, who discusses grief and the healing powers of the natural world.
English National Opera
Eight productions and concerts constitute the latest season, with a Puccini-themed opening in September to mark 100 years since his death: Jonathan Miller’s La bohème and a semi-staged performance of Suor Angelica. October sees Isabella Bywater’s new production of The Turn of the Screw, November a new The Elixir of Love from Harry Fehr, and February a new semi-staged concert performance of Thea Musgrave’s Mary, Queen of Scots, a company first.
Aoife Miskelly as Bird in Dame Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert – English Touring Opera
English Touring Opera
In an ever innovative programme, October and November will see Dame Judith Weir’s supernatural Blond Eckbert paired with stagings of music written at the time of the Ludwig Tieck poem that inspired it, including a cantata by Marianna Martines. In parallel, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snowmaiden will visit London, Snape Maltings, Buxton, Saffron Walden, Exeter and Poole.
Fairfield Halls
Croydon’s concert hall welcomes a returning Imperial Classical Ballet for Swan Lake in November, and before that, an October celebration of film music including Back to the Future and Top Gun with A Night at the Movies: The Soundtrack of your Life.
The Glasshouse (formerly Sage Gateshead) / Royal Northern Sinfonia
In October, Halloween gets scarier with Psycho in concert. Tippett’s A Child of our Time is performed in November, featuring more than two hundred musicians and four star soloists in Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Sarah Connolly, Nicky Spence and Willard White. Víkingur Ólafsson brings Brahms in February, before conductor Stephanie Childress takes to the podium for Dvořák in April.
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne’s first-ever production of Parsifal is the headline, in a new staging by Jetske Mijnssen, who makes her directorial debut there. Mariame Clément provides a new staging of Le nozze di Figaro. The four revivals include Barrie Kosky’s take on Handel’s Saul, which has travelled the world since its inception at Glyndebourne 10 years ago.
Hallé Orchestra
Kahchun Wong takes the reins as Principal Conductor, while Sir Mark Elder becomes Conductor Emeritus, presenting Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony. Thomas Adès continues in his role as artist-in-residence, conducting Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, two Sibelius symphonies and a new extended version of his America: A Prophecy featuring mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and the Hallé Choir. Elsewhere, the popular Rush Hour concert series returns, including a weekend devoted to Philip Glass starring his Grammy-winning friend the vocalist Angélique Kidjo.
Kings Place
Danielle de Niese sings classical song, opera and Broadway showtunes in September. October will see Black Lives in Music produce the Classically Black series for Black History Month, including a show from Ayanna Witter-Johnson and two newly commissioned works by Pete Letanka and Jason Yarde. And in November, the best-selling children’s book The Wolf, the Duck and the Mouse (2017) receives Aurora Orchestra treatment via Martin Suckling’s new piece for children.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
The UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra welcomes Benjamin Appl as artist-in-residence, performs four world premieres (including a Grace-Evangeline Mason work for soprano Sophie Bevan), and collaborates with Liverpool artists including mezzo Jennifer Johnston.
London Chamber Orchestra
The UK’s longest-standing professional chamber orchestra teams up with the VOCES8 Foundation Choir for a Christmas treat, bringing Handel’s Messiah to London’s Cadogan Hall in December.
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Joyce DiDonato joins Principal Conductor Edward Gardner for the season opener, Berlioz’s cantata The Death of Cleopatra. Later, star soloist visitors include Renée Fleming, Víkingur Ólafsson and Benjamin Grosvenor. Plus, there’s a running strand of Moments Remembered, exploring the link between music and memory, with featured pieces including John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls.
London Sinfonietta
To open the season, the ensemble tackles what it describes as ‘one of the most misunderstood pioneers’, celebrating Schoenberg in his 150th-anniversary year. It returns to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in November for Feldman’s meditative For Samuel. December brings a Scottish programme to Kings Place, including a public world premiere for James MacMillan’s Love Bade Me Welcome (2017).
London Symphony Orchestra
In Sir Antonio Pappano’s first concerts as Chief Conductor, expect a James MacMillan premiere (Concerto for Orchestra) and collaborations with Yuja Wang and Anna Lapwood. The season shines a light on British masters including Walton, Maconchy and Vaughan Williams, continuing the LSO’s cycle of his symphonies. Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas visits in October to celebrate turning 80 (Mahler’s Symphony No 2); and in November, André J Thomas leads a celebration of symphonic gospel, with the LSO and a chorus of more than 250 voices.
Manchester Camerata
Identity is the theme this season. Indian Carnatic song meets Western classical music in Māyā, a new piece from Artistic Partner Rushil Ranjan performed at the Stoller Hall in October. In November, the RNCM Concert Hall hosts a musical journey into the Scottish Highlands with a new commission from composer Donald Grant and his own arrangements of traditional Scottish tunes and Gaelic songs. Artistic Partner Daniel Pioro joins the orchestra for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons in January, and Mozart horn concertos continue the ensemble’s Mozart, Made in Manchester series in April and May.
Rakhi Singh, violinist and Artistic Director of Manchester Collective
Manchester Collective
Seven projects see the ensemble’s trademark cross-genre collaborations continue, featuring composer-pianist Vijay Iyer, electronic artist Clark and cellist Abel Selaocoe, plus commissions from Nabihah Iqbal, Laurence Osborn and Héloïse Werner.
Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras
The award-winning ensemble helps us to get festive throughout December with Charpentier’s Messe de minuit pour Noël – complete with 10 carol melodies. In a programme also featuring works by Bach, they tour around Europe, culminating with a performance at London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields on December 17th.
The Mozartists
The period-performance company formerly known as Classical Opera celebrates Jommelli at London’s Wigmore Hall in September, 250 years after his death. Le nozze di Figaro comes to Cadogan Hall in October in a concert presentation that marks the ensemble’s first performance of the piece in 13 years.
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
The coming season features early-January performances in London (Barbican), Warwick and Nottingham of a programme of Nielsen, Ravel and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, led by conductor Jaime Martín.
Northern Ireland Opera
Eugene Onegin comes to the Grand Opera House, Belfast, in September in a new production directed by Cameron Menzies and conducted by Dominic Limburg. The roles of Onegin and Tatyana are sung by Yuriy Yurchuk and Mary McCabe.
Opera North
G&S fans watch out for Ruddigore coming to Leeds, Newcastle, Salford and Nottingham through October and November. Elsewhere, Love Life – Weill’s collaboration with My Fair Lady writer Alan Jay Lerner, a seismic show for Broadway that later inspired the likes of Sondheim – gets a rare outing in January. The Magic Flute and Simon Boccanegra are among the operatic stalwarts along the way.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
As one of the six Resident Orchestras at London’s Southbank Centre, the OAE brings Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in October, before a cycle of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in November. Julia Bullock joins the orchestra in January for an evening of 18th-century ‘greatest hits’. In March, there’s a visit from keyboard player Olga Pashchenko for a celebration of Fanny Mendelssohn, whose solo piano cycle Das Jahr is framed by four new period-orchestra pieces inspired by it from contemporary composers Roxanna Panufnik, Electra Perivolaris, Freya Waley-Cohen and Errollyn Wallen.
Philharmonia Orchestra
Santtu-Matias Rouvali returns for his fourth year as Principal Conductor, with an autumn series theme of Nordic Soundscapes exploring the link between music and the climate crisis from a Nordic perspective. Three concerts will feature underwater footage of the Nordic coast, with Joakim Odelberg’s short films accompanied by scores from Mats Larsson Gothe, Miho Hazama and Outi Tarkiainen. They take Jess Gillam to Bedford in November for Glazunov’s Saxophone Concerto, and Osmo Vänskä is on the podium there in March for a programme of Mozart, Mendelssohn and Missy Mazzoli.
Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann is another of the Royal Opera’s new productions
The Royal Opera
Eight new productions will span three centuries, including the newest of the new in February with Festen, a world premiere for Mark-Anthony Turnage with a libretto by Billy Elliot’s Lee Hall and direction from Richard Jones; Allan Clayton and Gerald Finley star. Bernstein’s two major operatic works will be staged at Covent Garden for the first time: Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place are directed by Oliver Mears and will be at the Linbury Theatre through October. Elsewhere, Barrie Kosky continues his Ring cycle with Die Walküre in May, Sir Antonio Pappano conducting a cast including Christopher Maltman, Elisabet Strid, Lise Davidsen and Stanislas de Barbeyrac.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko enters his fourth season as Music Director and conducts the major Lights in the Dark series at London’s Royal Festival Hall, with music of resistance and hope written amid conflict; Dorothy Howell’s Lamia and Weill’s Four Whitman Songs feature alongside Shostakovich and Beethoven. As Associate Orchestra of the Royal Albert Hall, the RPO will team up with young pianist Yunchan Lim and violinist Maxim Vengerov in May, and solo violinists Esther Yoo and Johan Dalene will be joining them at Cadogan Hall.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Music Director Thomas Søndergård leads Mahler’s Second Symphony in October, before Isabelle Faust joins them for a Nordic Music Days programme of Errollyn Wallen, Rune Glerup, Bent Sørensen, Hildur Elísa Jónsdóttir, Aileen Sweeney and Sibelius in November. Video-game franchise Final Fantasy will be in concert that same month. Elsewhere, 2025 will see the Scottish premiere of Anna Clyne’s Dance for cello and orchestra, plus music by Coleridge Taylor-Perkinson performed by the RSNO Chamber Ensemble, presented by Kellen Gray.
Saffron Hall
The LPO is resident orchestra at Saffron Walden’s 740-seat venue, with concerts including Benjamin Grosvenor in Grieg’s Piano Concerto (September) and selections from Swan Lake (November). Away from the LPO residency, in November alone, pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy are in town, the Julian Bliss Septet pays tribute to Benny Goodman, and composer-instrumentalist Erland Cooper visits for the first time.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Following a successful 50th-anniversary season, there’s Coleridge-Taylor’s Violin Concerto in October (soloist Anthony Marwood), Jörg Widmann’s take on Beethoven in Con brio in January, and Nicola Benedetti plays Brahms’s Violin Concerto in May.
Scottish Opera
Eight operas, three world premieres, the company’s first animated opera and eleven composers will be showcased this season. Expect new productions of The Makropoulos Affair (February and March), The Merry Widow (April to June) and Trial by Jury (May and June).
Sinfonia Smith Square (formerly Southbank Sinfonia)
Sinfonia Smith Square is a merger of Southbank Sinfonia and St John’s Smith Square (now Smith Square Hall), describing itself as a ‘beacon for the future of classical music’ and annually welcoming 34 young musicians to form an orchestra. They pair Jessie Montgomery’s Banner with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony for their first interval-less Rush Hour concert in October; the next month, a programme titled Stories includes music by Caroline Shaw alongside works by Stravinsky and Ravel.
sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk/our-orchestra
The Sixteen
The Choral Pilgrimage visits Liverpool, Blackburn and London this autumn, pairing Lassus with madrigals by Maddalena Casulana, the first female composer in Western classical music history to have a whole book of her works printed.
Smith Square Hall (formerly St John’s Smith Square)
The world’s only orchestra for emergency services, the Blue Light SO, performs Tchaikovsky and Mozart in October. And if Halloween sounds a siren in your mind, sample the London Mozart Players with their Tasting Notes musical wine tasting experience as a refined alternative on the 31st. Later, there’s a showcase from Purcell School students (November) and Libera in concert (December).
sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk/whats-on
Orchestra of the Swan
Saffron Hall will host the ensemble alongside actors Anton Lesser and Charlie Hamblett for Laurie Lee’s Red Sky at Sunrise in October, following September visits to Buxton and Northampton. Artistic Director David Le Page has devised a musical programme to weave around Lee’s writing, with English and Spanish pieces from the likes of Walton, Turina and Falla.
Turner Sims
Gracing this Southampton University campus venue in September are Angela Hewitt, jazz vocalist Claire Martin and saxophonist Courtney Pine celebrating his 60th birthday. October guests include early music specialists Ensemble Molière and kora player Seckou Keita. Cellist Natalie Clein is one of 2025’s first visitors, with works by Brahms, Joachim and Kodály.
Ulster Orchestra
The Belfast-based ensemble helps the Belfast Philharmonic Choir celebrate 150 years with a November spectacular in the form of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. The same composer helps get 2025 off to a grand start, with Alpesh Chauhan conducting his Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage alongside some Farrenc, Schumann and Bruch. Later in the year, Ben Goldscheider performs the horn concerto written for him by Gavin Higgins, and musical theatre fans are treated to a whole night of showtunes from Wicked, West Side Story and Come from Away.
Welsh National Opera
The season opener is Adele Thomas’s WNO directorial debut with Rigoletto in Cardiff. Later, Nicky Spence makes his first ever appearance in the title-role of a new production of Peter Grimes (April to June).
Wigmore Hall
Another packed season awaits, with hundreds of concerts featuring thousands of musicians. There will be 30-plus world and UK premieres, showcasing the likes of Dame Judith Weir and Caroline Shaw; composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood is set to play the ondes martenot; Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Brad Mehldau unite for Fauré’s centenary; and there are residencies from Nicky Spence and Vilde Frang.
This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today
