Performer: Rufus Frowde

After the overload of concerts and carol singing around Christmas, most choirs have a well-deserved break before starting for another year, but not Vivamus. This young London-based choir entered 2013 in style with a candlelit concert for Epiphany. The concert’s main advertised work was Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, with other composers on the programme including Leighton, Howells and Whitacre.

There’s a trend amongst programmers nowadays to provide concerts with a ‘hook’: an extra-musical incentive to pull the punters in, or at least help performers pinpoint their pieces.