Wonderfully festive!

Unlike his better-known contemporaries, Czech composer Zelenka has faded into obscurity, Spirato! and Barts Chamber Choir made an extremely persuasive case for this highly original music. 

The “Bach B minor” is a classic amongst choral singers, but although parts of it are so familiar and the name is often tossed around casually, upon hearing it you are reminded why it has the status it does. Bach never heard the mass in its entirety and the movements were written years apart, explaining why there is such a huge range of style; this means we are spoilt as an audience.

The young Spanish violinist proves an ardent advocate for a work originally dismissed as a “Hollywood Concerto” as the BBC Symphony Orchestra closes its Barbican season.

Late Brahms, early Schoenberg: under Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic draw tenderness from two monumental scores. 

Come away fellow sailors, your anchors be weighing! All board the Cutty Sark for a semi-staging of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.

Songs and symphonies from Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, concluding with a vision of “heavenly life” from Gustav Mahler.