Artiste: Philip Cobb

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.

Joana Carneiro conducts the BBC Philharmonic in a lively Mendelssohn concerto and elegant Mahler Fifth.

Philip Cobb’s bluesy inflections turned the dear old Barbican Hall into the coolest nightspot in the capital; they might as well have lowered the lights and served cocktails.

Fluidity and colour in Debussy's La Mer and hard-edged defiance in Shostakovich's Symphony no. 5 were combined with Philip Cobb's trumpet refined and bright in Haydn. 

Ahead of its US tour with Michael Tilson Thomas, the London Symphony Orchestra flexed its muscles in a display of orchestral strength on home turf in the Barbican. 

Shostakovich's first and second piano concertos were coupled with Tchaikovsky's third symphony in the exciting continuation of the LSO's complete Tchaikovsky cycle, under their principal conductor, Valery Gergiev.The concerto for trumpet, piano, and strings (Op. 35) was written in 1933, with Shostakovich playing the piano part at its première in the same year.