Venue: St Paul's Cathedral, London

Sir Simon Rattle conducts 80+ members of the LSO in the monumental Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale in a site-specific performance inside – and outside – St Paul’s Cathedral.

Michael Spyres' long lyrical line in the Sanctus was outstanding, his tone ardent and ringing.

Positioned at the heart of St Paul’s Cathedral, Rutter took to the stage to perform a sold out concert dedicated to his life as a composer. 

The LSO, led by Edward Gardner, delivered a moving and profound performance of Haydn's Creation despite the acoustic challenges of St Paul's. 

Two strange bedfellows – Penderecki and Bruckner – brought together in the acoustically awkward, if architecturally spectacular surrounding of St Pauls Cathedral by Daniel Harding and the LSO as part of the City of London Festival.

On the night of 29 December, 1940, after a brief respite over Christmas, German bombers roared back over Britain. They dropped numerous incendiary bombs on the City of London, causing massive destruction, loss of life, and uncontrollable fires that raged for days. Miraculously, St Paul’s Cathedral survived the onslaught intact, even as much of the surrounding neighbourhood was reduced to rubble.

The City of London Festival this year is ambitiously programmed, with a number of common themes running through the events.

The newly built and unconventionally imposing Coventry Cathedral, built next to the ruins of the original medieval building destroyed in the Second World War, played host to the first performance of Britten’s War Requiem in 1962.