Performer: Oliver Janes

It is rare to find a venue where one can walk from a Cuban big band set (Orquestra Estelar) and into a performance of one of Messiaen’s most transcendental and intimate masterpieces. Rarer still for such a venue to place the latter performance next door to the former in a lecture room entirely lacking in acoustic shielding, so that any noise from outside is clearly audible.

Principal clarinettist with the CBSO, Oli Janes talks about the elegies, raucous dances and virtuoso fireworks of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, which the orchestra performs in April.

Oliver Janes has been principal clarinet with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for over three years and still loves it like it was the first day.