Winter 2021: UK Classical Concerts
Get in some live music before the end of the year (and before Christmas music takes over completely). There’s still time to book for a unique take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, interspersed with Nordic folk music, and the heavy metal end of the classical spectrum with big percussion, live electronics, and amplified strings. If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting us by buying us a cuppa on Ko-fi. Thank you 😘
Sunday 28 November, 7.30pm, £13-£65 (£10-£15 with promo code AUTUMN)
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank
This Philharmonia concert looks really great. It starts with a new piece by Isobel Waller-Bridge, an award-winning composer known for her scores for film, television and theatre, most notably Fleabag (😍), written by and starring her sister Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It’s followed up with a distinctive take on Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons by Finnish violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto, who intersperses the familiar movements with Nordic folk music. His past exploits include getting a concert audience of 6000 singing a Finnish folksong, playing electric violin in a collaboration with a juggler, and making a film for Greenpeace in a devastated forest...so you know this is going to be something special.
Use promo code AUTUMN to get £15 seats in the front stalls or £10 in the rear stalls.
Thursday 25 November, 7pm-8.30pm, free
Online
"Another chance to see Hera's acclaimed digital opera ("Astonishing" ★★★★★ The i). This is an encounter between two women, an audience, and a riotous chorus of disabled voices. With text drawn from real conversations, samples, soundscapes and singing, We Ask These Questions of Everybody shares radical, surprising and utopian disabled perspectives on self, society and the body. It was made and led by disabled artists, collaborating online whilst shielding from COVID. With classical, electronic, jazz and folk artists working together, to transform the transcript of a single conversation into something extraordinary. It’s 50 minutes long and is best listened to on headphones.
3-11 December, varied times, £10-£25
London, Leeds, Bristol, Salford, Birkenhead
Big percussion, live electronics, and amplified strings. A distortion pedal called the Ibanez Tube Screamer makes an appearance. It’s not going to be a meditative listening experience. Sometimes, we all just need to scream into a pillow. Get booked in for a heavy, intense night by Manchester Collective, with music by Dobrinka Tabakova, Bryce Dessner, Michael Gordeon and Sebastian Gainsborough aka Vessel.
25-27 November, 7pm, £20-£25 (£5 16-25s)
Southwark Cathedral, London
This is one of the City of London Sinfonia’s ‘roaming’ concerts so you can walk around, lie down or change location during the concert. Immerse yourself in the diary of a young, autistic naturalist in the world premiere of Scenes from the Wild. It’s a dramatic song cycle based on the 2020 book by Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist, with music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad and text by librettist and musician Amanda Holden, and movement direction by Sarah Dowling from Punchdrunk, the world’s leading immersive theatre company. The diary traces the year through his autism, being bullied at school and real events that describe his interaction with the natural world.
Thursday 2 December, 8pm, £12 (£5 students)
Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
An intoxicating frenzy of virtuosity opens this concert with Unity Capsule by Brian Ferneyhough. His works push performers to the very edge of their limits, and when played by flautist Kathryn Williams, Ferneyhough’s music is transformed into jaw-dropping physical theatre. For this one-off collaboration, Kathryn’s fearless style will perfectly complement Bastard Assignments – a quartet of composer/performers whose appearances in recent years have left audiences shocked, amused and ultimately amazed. Their performances blend experimental music with outrageous spoken word and brilliantly choreographed use of space, to produce events that are impossible to define.
25-27 November, 5-8.30pm, free
Cooper Gallery, Barnsley
As night falls, Luminous Birds by Kathy Hinde uses synchronised lighting and spatialised music to create the sensation of birds flying overhead. Each bird is handmade using the traditional paper folding technique of Origami. They light up in turn to create an animated sequence similar to stop motion animation accompanied by micro-compositions made from the sounds of distorted pianos and bells. The action of many birds, flocking together, is one of nature’s most amazing phenomena – an ultimate act of cooperation, hundreds moving forward in harmony. Luminous Birds creates a moment out of the ordinary… A magical experience for all the family, to be viewed after dark.
Tuesday 7 December, 6.30pm, £20
Thames Tunnel Shaft, Brunel Museum
We couldn’t write this without including a Christmas concert, now, could we? This is a festive performance with a difference: it’s in a tunnel shaft, where Isambard Kingdom Brunel nearly drowned. When it opened in 1843, it was the world’s most popular visitor attraction, and Brunel organised underground fairs and banquets here. It’s now open again and you can get acquainted with the space with the help of DEBUT. Book for a night of festive favourites, sing-along carols and mulled cider.
Sunday 12 December, 11.30am, £17.50
Kings Place, King’s Cross
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has a Sunday morning series of events combining a talk with a live performance. A sort of secular Sunday service. This one, with Professor Daniel Leech-Wilkinson of King’s College London, invites us to consider how we can use musical performance to empathise with others. Research on the sounds that caregivers exchange with infants has profound implications for the way we understand classical music; how we sing and play these scores and how music moves us. It’s paired with a performance of Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, music by JS Bach.
3-8 December, 7.30pm, £16
Inverness, Perth, Dundee, Edinburgh & Glasgow
An atmospheric and life-affirming evening of music set within a shimmering array of candles. From the gorgeous musical balm of Henry Purcell, to the warmth and generosity of Brahms, via touching music by Biber, and, bringing things up to date, the thick, treacly sonic textures of Julia Wolfe’s Four Marys, this is a programme that spans the centuries, offering something for every taste. It’s a pre-Christmas musical feast with a wide variety of music choices.
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, hospitals, prisons and even in Primark. Hannah is also an interviewer, writer and guest lecturer, and runs the Avon Chamber Choir in Bristol. In a past life she founded London Flashmob, producing quirky events from wedding proposals to cultural pranks for up to 1,000 people.
Follow Hannah on Twitter @Hannah_Fiddy.