Quatour Mosaïques explores neglected repertoire

Enter the sound world of Quatuor Mosaïques and check your expectations at the door. They perform on what we call period instruments: gut strings (rather than steel), classical bows (shorter than their modern counterparts), and less tension in the instruments.

String quartets don’t come much more ‘period’ than the Quatuor Mosaïques, even if their ideas of historical authenticity are more flexible than the ensemble which brought them together (Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus Wien).

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.

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. 

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