Find articles | Emily Owen

On entering the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at the Globe Theatre, you feel like you are stepping back in time with its painted ceiling, cushioned benches (a modern luxury) and a candlelit bare stage.

Players from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment play Schubert's Octet in F major alongside Lieder from 1824 sung by Roderick Williams, Mary Bevan, Robert Murray and Rozanna Madylus, accompanied by Sholto Kynoch.

The Holst Singers perform a rich programme of Russian music at Temple Church.

It is a wonderful thing to hear the full range and colour of a symphony orchestra used to its full effect during the course of an evening's programme and tonight the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo showed the diversity, versatility and sheer joy which for me really brings the music to life.

A triumphant Elijah as Edward Gardner conducts the Blackheath Halls Chorus and Orchestra, joined by Matthew Rose, Ailish Tynan, Robert Murray and Louise Winter and young singers from Trinity Laban.

Somewhere between a concert and a scientific experiment, tonight’s Tales from Babel at the Royal Academy of Music was a fascinating study into the way we process text and language. Having been given a response handset when we entered the room, the first half of the concert was a rendition of a work by Christopher Fox which gave the concert it’s name; Tales from Babel.

Composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is a monumental setting of the words of the Latin Mass, interspersed with the poignant poetry of Wilfred Owen.

With a sparkling programme of concert classics, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Grzegorz Nowak and joined by renowned violinist Robert Davidovici were on fine form at the Cadogan Hall on Tuesday evening. They opened the programme with one of Berlioz’s operatic overtures – the only part to have survived in the current concert repertoire from his little known opera Benvenuto Cellini.

It is always a risk and a pleasure to programme some of the most well known works in the classical repertoire, and Italy’s Orchestra Mozart, joined by young Venezuelan conductor Diego Matheuz and pianist Maria João Pires, had some of the favourites on show in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Thursday evening.They opened the concert with the effervescent overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

One hundred years after the première performance of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, perhaps one of the most controversial and infamous stage premières of all time, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Barbican Centre’s Total Immersion collaboration provided an all-round look at every aspect of the music, choreography and the première itself through a variety of events on Sunday, culminating

A hush fell over the auditorium as renowned concert pianist and long-standing friend of the LSO Mitsuko Uchida took her seat for Mozart’s Rondo in A minor for solo piano. A personal tribute to Sir Colin Davis, Uchida opened the Rondo with almost childlike simplicity, the delicate chromaticism of the opening theme played with simplicity and tenderness and a magical connection to the melodic line.

Written in 1594 and published posthumously in Munich the following year, the Lagrime de San Pietro was Orlando de Lassus’ final composition.

The singers and instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants returned to the Barbican stage to rapturous applause and cheers after their performance on Saturday night. “Unfortunately there is simply no more music! We have finished the book!” said the tenor and director of tonight’s ensemble, Paul Agnew.

Celebrating their 40th anniversary year, The Tallis Scholars presented a programme of Renaissance polyphony centred around another anniversary – that of Carlo Gesualdo, the 400th anniversary of whose death falls this year. The first half of the concert was a complete performance of Gesualdo’s masterpiece, the Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday (1611).

Tonight’s programme was a feast of British music, with a Britten flavour, played by the strings of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, joined by virtuosic viola player Lawrence Power, whose prowess is bringing this much-neglected solo instrument into its own.We started with the beautiful Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra, written by Edward Elgar in 1905.

The Royal Academy of Music tonight presented the fruits of their latest postgraduate opera course with two short operas representing opposite ends of the musical timeline.Purcell’s miniature three-act opera really needs no introduction.

Some of England’s greatest choral music dates from the period of political and religious upheaval during the late 15th to early 17th centuries, when composers were having to adapt to new monarchs and changes to the church service almost as frequently as they would have changed their shirts.

The culmination of the London Handel Festival is a much anticipated event, and tonight’s performance of Handel’s radiant composition L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was no exception. With an array of eminent musicians performing to a packed St George’s, Hanover Square, the mood was celebratory and the performance had a glow and energy that suited Handel’s mercurial music.

Centered around the later, lesser-known composers of art song, tonight’s programme started with a first half of melancholy Hugo Wolf Lieder. Both Schubert and Schumann wrote settings of Goethe’s unhappy Harfenspieler, but evidently Wolf was unsatisfied, as, on principle, he avoided setting texts which he thought had been successfully treated before.

Premièring a new touring programme at their home church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, early music vocal ensemble Stile Antico treated us to a concert centred around the music of the Hapsburg courts of the late 15th and 16th centuries.

Mozart’s Così fan tutte is a comic opera filled with deceit, disguises and betrayal, all carried along by a breathtaking score and witty lyrics. What better way to start ETO’s Spring 2013 season than with a new rendering of this timeless work, in a brilliantly clever English translation by Martin Fitzpatrick.

Tonight’s programme was a real treat for Bach enthusiasts: one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world performing two of the most popular concertos, joined by Carolyn Sampson for two heart-wrenching cantatas for soprano and obbligato flute. We started with Cantata 209, “Non sa che sia dolore”.

It seems an unlikely concert title: Bach and electronic improvisations, but that is exactly what the unassuming Pekka Kuusisto informed us we were going to be experiencing at Kings Place on Monday night.

Donizetti’s melodramma giocoso in two acts, L’elisir d’amore, is a light-hearted tale of love overcoming all obstacles, with the help of a little “love potion”.

I Fagiolini is a vocal group I have been trying to see live for quite a while now, so I was extremely excited to be attending the London offering of Insalata I Fagiolini at Cadogan Hall.

The Brandenburg Choral Festival is an enormous endeavour, with hundreds of concerts all over London, featuring all kinds of choral music and a diverse range of performers. Tonight we were in the beautiful church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the heart of the festival, for a late-night concert of stunning Tallis, Byrd and Allegri by candlelight.

With such a star-studded line-up at a concert that had been sold out for weeks, this was always going to be an evening to remember. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of those iconic pieces that never gets old, and every time I hear the throbbing bass of the opening chorus, I still get a tingle of excitement.

It was with great curiosity that I set off for the Barbican on Saturday night. I’ve never been to see an opera in the cinema before – I don’t think I’ve even sat through a pre-recorded film of an opera for many years, as I am a great fan of the “real thing”: opera performed live on stage.

Celebrating Britten’s centenary, tonight’s performance of his five canticles seemed particularly fitting. Written throughout his composing career, they are a testament to the composer’s affinity for poetry and skill at writing with particular performers in mind, and they provide an intimate commentary on Britten’s large-scale works.

Jonathan Miller and ENO’s iconic interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado has returned to the London Coliseum this Christmas, to the delight of G&S fans across the capital, including myself.

The Brahms cello sonatas in E minor and F major are two pillars of the cello repertoire and represent, rightly so, the first career peak for performers. Together they cover the full range of emotion, from dark, brooding introspection to the playful nature of the middle movements.

Keeping up their tradition of mixing contemporary repertoire and new commissions with early music, Fretwork presented an eclectic mix of Purcell Fantasias and a variety of modern works written or arranged for viol consort and soprano in tonight’s concert, part of the RCM’s annual viol festival.

Contemporary opera is a genre that strikes fear into the hearts of many: visions of singers throwing themselves around the stage, incomprehensible atonal music, avant-garde costumes and weird and wonderful story-lines abound in the classical concertgoer’s expectations.

The second collaboration between Opera Rara and the BBC Symphony Orchestra brought a starry cast to the Barbican Centre on Sunday evening for a revival of Donizetti’s tragic opera Belisario. Written in 1836, immediately after the triumph of Lucia di Lammermoor, it was an instant success following its première at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and remained in the repertoire for several decades.

“We call you to witness that if our voices work wonders, our lutes, too, please both heart and ear”. These lines, taken from the translation of the first piece in tonight’s programme, summed up, for me, the evening. Not only did Le Poème Harmonique provide us with some truly magical singing, the instrumental group provided balance, entertainment and fun throughout.

“Community, exclusion, rejection and desire”, writes director Christopher Rolls about English Touring Opera’s production of Albert Herring. “Doesn’t sound like a recipe for an uproarious comedy does it? And the key thing about Herring is that it is very very funny.

Seeing both these ensembles live has been a dream of mine for a few years now, having been brought up with my father’s love of the Hilliard Ensemble’s collaborative recordings with jazz saxophonist Jan Gabarek. And what better place to be transported back in time with these early music experts than the Wigmore Hall.

Eugene Onegin, a lyric opera by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, is based on Pushkin’s novel of the same name, converted into an operatic libretto by Konstantin Shilovsky. It tells the tale of a selfish hero, Onegin, who rejects the outburst of love from the young Tatyana and instead flirts with her older sister, Olga, who is engaged to his best friend, Lensky. This leads to a duel, in which Lensky is killed.

“Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin...”So Julia Somerville, looking extremely comfortable in a pale yellow armchair, with a beautiful table and reading lamp beside her, began a rather unusual recital by Roderick Williams and Roger Vignoles of Brahms’ only song cycle, Die Schöne Magelone.

Those few seconds of breathless silence at the end of a recital before thunderous applause are a rare thing, and a sure sign that the evening has been a success. Such was the case at the Wigmore Hall on Wednesday night after Roderick Williams and Gary Matthewman were called back to the stage for a second encore.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary season, British Youth Opera are once again exploring the 19th- and 20th-century lyric repertoire in staging their first ever production of Smetana’s comic opera The Bartered Bride alongside Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera.

For the second installment in Saturday evening’s Corbridge Chamber Music Festival double bill, St Andrew’s Church was bedecked with tea lights for a programme of light-hearted salon chamber music, based around Book 6 of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, Op. 67.

Now in its 13th year, the annual Corbridge Chamber Music Festival fills St Andrew’s Church, Corbridge to its high-vaulted ceiling, with glorious music from the Gould Piano Trio (who are celebrating their 20th anniversary this year) and their varied guests.