Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Peter Moore

Ryan Bancroft’s LSO programme, inherited from Simon Rattle, mixes attractive English folksong-inspired pieces with more challenging, late 20th-century works.

Bernstein, Chindamo and Rachmaninov bring an evening of jazz-inspired music from the streets of New York to a deeply personal Russian symphony. 

The National Symphony Orchestra play a miniature by short-lived French composer Lili Boulanger and the European premiere of Joe Chindamo's trombone concerto. 

Conducting a programme of mostly 20th-century classics that could have come from his early glory days in Birmingham, Rattle was in his element.

Rarely has so distinguished a group been assembled to give this work live; it would have shone as a highlight even in a normal year of visiting foreign ensembles and performers.

There were memorable moments, as Noseda continued his advocacy of Sir James MacMillan and Shostakovich symphony cycle. Yet Noseda’s maximalist approach had its costs, as it was only in the opening Kodály that found Noseda at his best.

Arcomis is a Cardiff-based organisation concerned with the promotion and commissioning of new music. Modest yet effective, most of their work is at an essential grass-root level, yet, seemingly out of nowhere, they have conjured an incredibly bold and wide-ranging three-day festival of brass based at Cardiff’s St David’s Hall, the Cardiff University Music Department and the Royal Welsh College of