Glittering Baroque arias from Natalie Montakhab and Il Bacio

The teaming up of RSAMD’s best students with Scottish Opera has now become a much-anticipated annual event: in a showcase of best practice, it demonstrates how a national opera company can work together with a national music conservatoire to provide immensely valuable experience, and a chance for the youngsters to work right alongside the professionals on stage, off stage and in the pit.

Metastasio's tale of noble Roman suicide was made into a pasticcio by Handel in 1732: and, after 283 years of silence, returned to the London stage as part of the 2015 London Handel Festival. 

Bach’s final work The Art of Fugue, left incomplete at his death in 1750, has long been famous for (among other things) not having specified its instrumentation. It’s written in open score – each line of music, or “voice”, is given a distinct printed line, making it hard to guess what instrument Bach actually had in mind to play it.

In his first New York appearance since the termination of his contract as BSO Music Director, Nelsons courts public sympathy and makes some thrilling music.

The sparkle of Max Bruch's Fecond Violin Concerto and the drama of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony overcome the gloom of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s dark forebodings.