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“If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” There was certainly plenty of Shakespeare-inspired music on the bill for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's celebration of The Bard. 

There was an inundation of the sound of John Tavener's Flood of Beauty at the Barbican on Sunday, with the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Martyn Brabbins.

Alison Bell joins Britten Sinfonia to wow at Wigmore Hall in the fourth of the orchestra’s lunchtime chamber series, including Schoenberg's String Quartet no. 2.

Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival continued its focus on politics and spirituality with Henryck Górecki's popular Third Symphony, coupled with Krzysztof Penderecki's lesser-known Violin Concerto – but it was the latter work which fared better.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s latest “only connect” programme was inspired by its allocated date – 12/12/12. An equivalent numerical repetition will not recur for another century. Furthermore the reversal of the first figure to 21 coincides with the day signalled by the Mayan calendar as a day of ending.

As part of their Late Mix programme at the Sage Gateshead, Northern Sinfonia put on a performance of two dramatic chamber works, from either end of the twentieth century. Both works were due to be performed by soprano Claire Booth, but she was replaced by Rebecca-Jane Lea for Judith Weir’s Consolations of Scholarship and by Allison Bell for Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.