October 2021: UK Classical Concerts
On the menu for October: a spooky opera for Hallowe’en, a 3-course meal with an orchestra, a live late-night radio show and much more! If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting us by buying us a cuppa on Ko-fi. Thank you 😘
Friday 29 October, 8pm, £12-£22 (students: 25% off)
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank
BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified, hosted by Elizabeth Alker, presents music that’s hard to classify, mixing classical, contemporary, electronic and experimental sounds. The Southbank Centre hosts a live performance of this late-night radio show, with orchestral music, visuals and electronics, punctuated by interviews. This BBC Concert Orchestra performance is conducted by André de Ridder, who we interviewed recently about innovation in the presentation of classical concerts.
21 October, 7pm - 11pm, £30-£100 Fidelio Café, Clerkenwell
Food, wine and live music! The United Strings of Europe give an intimate performance at London’s only classical music café. There are various ticket prices depending on whether you want food: £30 for the concert plus a drink; £50 for under 30s with a 3-course meal, drink and concert; and the standard price (with meal and drink) is £100.
Fidelio is where we used to host regular drinks for anyone working in classical music. Sign up for our mailing list or follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook to be the first to hear if/when this returns.
29 October - 3 November, 7.30pm, £7-£22
Hoxton Hall, London
Gothic Opera curates mysterious performances of rarely-seen operas that take their inspiration from the eerie atmosphere of Gothic fiction. This Hallowe’en they present the UK premiere of Charles Gounod's opera La Nonne sanglante (‘The Bloody Nun’), a chilling tale of ghosts, a family feud, and mistaken identity. They will be using the layout of Hoxton Hall in an unconventional way, and the performance is both directed and conducted by women: Franciska Éry and Rosie Howarth. This opera has only been performed twice, in Germany and in France, since it was first staged in 1854.
Saturday 30 October, 7pm & 9pm, £24.50 (<30s £8.50)
Kings Place, King’s Cross
You’ll have to be quick if you want tickets to this one as the 7pm showing has already sold out and there’s only a handful of tickets left for the later showing. This is an immensely popular piece by Max Richter, which reworks Vivaldi’s original Four Seasons. It’s followed by a live performance of On the Nature of Daylight, which, even if you don’t know it by name, you’ll have heard in a multitude of film and TV soundtracks, including The Handmaid’s Tale, Stranger than Fiction, Shutter Island and The Innocents.
Saturday 30 October, 7.30pm, £15 - £25 (<25s £5) Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican
A collaborative performance project between LGBT ensemble The Fourth Choir and an ensemble of Deaf professional musicians and performers. This concert aims to create a fully bilingual and bicultural programme that explores how to marry sung and signed performance and create a musical "meeting place" between the Deaf and hearing world. And you’ll hear brand-new music: an innovative new choral commission by Kate Whitley, that uses an original British Sign Language poem by DL Williams as its source text.
Tuesday 12 October, 8pm - 10.30pm, £12
Canopy Beer, Herne Hill
Delving into generations-old European traditions for inspiration, particularly the work of 12th century pioneering female composers, iyatraQuartet re-imagine early music and stories through a unique contemporary twist. The ensemble perform at a venue run by craft beer brewery Canopy Beer. Expect thrilling improvisation, cutting-edge collaborative composition, and a nice pale ale or two…
Sunday 17 October, 5.15pm - 8pm, £15-39 (students: 50% off)
Leeds Town Hall, Leeds
Chineke! is the first professional orchestra and junior orchestra in Europe made up of majority Black, Asian and Ethnically Diverse musicians. The orchestra heads to Leeds for the very first time, led by conductor Brandon Keith Brown, to present music by black composers including Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Joseph Bologne. Chi-chi Nwanoku OBE is the inspirational founder of Chineke!, and we interviewed her recently about rebuilding the music industry following the pandemic.
Wednesday 6 October, 4.30pm & 7.30pm, £22-£25
Cavendish Hall, Peak District
ZRI take their name from the Zum Roten Igel Tavern (‘To the Red Hedgehog’), the tavern in 19th century Vienna where Schubert and Brahms each went to hear Gypsy and folk music. Taking inspiration from this crucible of cultural exchange, ZRI perform radical re-workings of iconic pieces in the 19th-century chamber music canon. Expect a fiery blend of Hungarian folk, gypsy music, and works by Brahms and Janáček as you’ve never heard them before. ZRI also has gigs this month in Crowborough and St Leonards-on-Sea (both in East Sussex).
1-2 October, 7.30pm, £8-£12
Greenwich Theatre, London
Pegasus Opera, champions of artists from diverse backgrounds, celebrate Black History Month. Hear the rich sounds of opera and song as they journey through some operative greats and explore music inspired by the Black Diaspora. Read more about Pegasus Opera in our article about Organisations Supporting Black People in the Arts.
Hannah Fiddy is a creative entrepreneur, developing new audiences for classical music. She has created and promoted numerous concerts outside of traditional spaces, including warehouses, pubs, clubs, museums and even in Primark..
Dan Phillips is a freelance violinist and writer. Having graduated from the University of Manchester with a first-class music degree and three Hargreaves Prizes for Academic Achievement, Dan is pursuing a career as an academic musicologist.