Performer: Nederlands Kamerkoor

Candida Thompson’s performance of Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel with understated beauty, immaculate phrasing and restrained emotion, steals the show.

Soloists and choir, headed by a spellbinding Christian Gerhaher, brought real lustre to Schumann’s treatment of Goethe’s magnum opus.

In his 2016 opera Blank Out, Dutch composer Michel van der Aa has managed to create a new kind of operatic ‘reality’ that resonates powerfully with today’s Zeitgeist. Highly recommended.

Bach’s Magnificat featured superlative solos from both singers and musicians, but the RCO and Iván Fischer reached a higher plane in a beautifully crafted and optimistic Brahms’ First Symphony.

Superlative vocal and instrumental soloists, led by Michael Schade as a vividly intense Evangelist, impress in Bach’s St John Passion at the Concertgebouw.

Robert White's Lamentations bring a programme of English polyphony to a memorable climax.