Performer: John Mark Ainsley

An old instrument, a veteran star singer, and a late rose all bloom at Oxford's annual songfest.

Handel's Tartar-Ottoman drama Tamerlano gets a majestically beautiful, if not wildly dramatic, outing at the Barbican with Il Pomo d'Oro. 

Maxim Emelyanychev conducted the period orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro in Tamerlano at the Concertgebouw, an enjoyable performance of Handel's darkest opera. 

An unusual programme of music from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, viewing the passing of youth through a lens of nostalgia and sadness but, at the same time, also dreaming of the sheer joy and exuberance of youth.

The Teatro Real crowns his Britten cycle with a canonic War Requiem conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado and superbly sung by John Mark Aisnley and Jacques Imbrailo. 

Mark-Anthony Turnage's Passchendaele, his WWI-themed piece, received its UK première this evening, in a concert given by the CBSO Youth Orchestra.