The best classical concerts to book this year

Look who’s back: Simon Rattle is conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Southbank next month - Mark Allan

Spring has well and truly sprung, and classical music is bursting out all over, like blossom. The concert season still has a month or two to run, while at the same time the festival season is springing into life. The Proms is the biggest of them all (and you can read my pick of the programme here) but there are dozens of other wonderful festivals all round the country, some of which are picked out below, among the most promising concerts of the coming months.

This article is updated weekly.

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• May
• June
• July

May

Wigmore Hall 125^th Anniversary Festival

The Wigmore Hall celebrates its 125th anniversary - Nick Guttridge

Britain’s most beloved small classical venue launched 125 years ago this month, and is celebrating the birthday in fine style. There are 24 concerts across 14 days, many of them broadcast live on BBC Radio. Among the many great names appearing are virtuoso pianists Yunchan Lim and Igor Levit, Norwegian singer Lise Davidsen and the peerless French Baroque group Les Arts Florissants.

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

The CBSO will play pieces that invite you to dance - Andrew Fox

Who would even think to write a piece for nine kettledrums and an orchestra? The great master of American minimalism Philip Glass, that’s who. In addition to this concerto, the CBSO will also play Carlos Simon’s Four Black American Dances and Rachmaninov’s final major composition, his Symphonic Dances. They are infused with different kinds of rhythmic energy yet all three invite you to dance.

June

The Sixteen Choral Pilgrimage

The Sixteen choir is wonderful

Every year that wonderful choir The Sixteen tours the cathedrals of Britain with a carefully curated programme of old and new sacred masterpieces. This year it’s the turn of two Spanish renaissance composers who can rival any of the great composers of the age, Cristóbal de Morales and Sebastián de Vivánco. Alongside them will be contemporary sacred music from Kerensa Briggs and James MacMillan. To hear this great music sung in those lofty sacred spaces is enthralling.

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment & Simon Rattle

Simon Rattle will work his magic on two masterpieces by Berlioz - Juan Carlos Cardenas

Not many things tempt Simon Rattle to return to Britain from his adopted German home, but one is the prospect of playing with the OAE. It’s one of the great so-called “period orchestras”, founded 40 years ago to restore the pristine colours of older classical music by reviving old instruments and long-forgotten playing styles. In this concert, conductor and orchestra will be working their special magic on two romantic masterpieces by Berlioz, the Symphonie Fantastique and the viola concerto Harold in Italy.

Isabelle Faust at Aldeburgh

Exquisitely poised: violinist Isabelle Faust - ullstein bild

To hear one of JS Bach’s beautifully turned sonatas for violin and harpsichord is a rare treat. To hear all six of them, played by that most exquisitely poised of violinists Isabelle Faust and the equally fine Australian harpsichordist Kristian Bezuidenhout will be sheer heaven. It’s just the kind of refined pleasure one expects at the Aldeburgh Festival, which this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the death of its co-founder Benjamin Britten.

Monochromatic Light (Afterlife)

American composer Tyshawn Sorey - BARBICAN

Fifty years ago, a beautiful chapel in Texas designed for spiritual contemplation and adorned with 14 huge paintings by Mark Rothko received a musical homage from the great master of quiet contemplative music, Morton Feldman. Now that homage has received its own tribute from African-American composer Tyshawn Sorey. He’s composed a new piece for voices, percussion and singer Davóne Tines which “draws on Feldman’s legacy while speaking to the present”.

July

East Neuk Festival

Northern exposure: Opus 13 will be returning to East Neuk Festival in July - Neil Hanna

The glorious countryside of East Neuk with its tiny fishing villages and exquisite parish churches is worth a visit on its own, and its intimate chamber music festival fits the landscape perfectly. It’s not all Western classical music – there’s also Turkish folk and Arab classical music – but the concert from Norwegian string quartet Opus 13, with music by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Britta Byström’s Iceland-inspired Images from the Floating World would be my pick of the bill.

Quatuor Ébène

Super-refined: the French string quarted Quatuor Ébène - Aline Paley/ Verbier Festival

This wonderful, super-refined French string quartet is known for slipping from mainstream classical music into such unexpected territory as the soundtrack for Pulp Fiction. But in these four concerts they turn to what everyone agrees is the greatest monument of the genre: Beethoven’s immortal 18 quartets. They’re playing 11 works that range across Beethoven’s elegant yet fiery early period, the stormy middle period, and the transcendental – and yet often disarmingly simple – final period.

York Early Music Festival

Isn’t all classical music “early”, you might be thinking? Yes, but the vast treasury of music before Mozart is a world all to itself, with long-vanished performing styles and exotic instruments. The York Early Music Festival is an ideal place to explore it, for two reasons. The city has lovely old venues, stretching back to medieval times. And the festival invites the best performers, including the choir I Fagiolini (which performs Monteverdi’s Vespers from 1610 on the opening night), and The Sixteen. A highlight of this year’s festival is a day-long celebration of the great master of musical melancholy, John Dowland.

Cheltenham Music Festival

John Wilson leads the Sinfonia of London on the last night of the festival - CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

This great festival, which has been one of the great patrons of British composers and actually nurtured its own musical genre (the ‘Cheltenham Symphony’), celebrates its 80^th anniversary this year. There are big-scale events in the sumptuous Town Hall, including John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, and on the opening night the Aurora Orchestra and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. At the other end of the scale are superb solo artists including pianists Angela Hewitt and Mariam Batsashvili, folk singing from The Unthanks, and as ever a focus on young creative talent, with new music created within the festival’s own Composer Academy, and three premieres from Italian-Irish violinist Violetta Suvini and Friends.

BBC Proms

Pianist Yuja Wang will be one of the star guests at the Last Night of the Proms - CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

When it comes to the Proms, jaded critics will always carp at the absence of this or that favourite composer. Anybody else will be knocked sidewise by the sheer size and scope of it. There are 86 concerts ranging from huge orchestral and choral blockbusters such as Berlioz’s Requiem to the intimacies of Elizabethan lute songs, and from 100^th anniversary tributes to Miles Davis and Morton Feldman to a celebration of Disney film scores. All this richness can be yours for as little as £8, but you’ll have to hurry – those tickets sell out fast. And if you don’t want to splash out, listen to them all for free on BBC Radio 3.

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Three Choirs Festival

Several of Edward Elgar’s best-loved works will be performed at the Three Choirs Festival - Reginald Haines

Europe’s oldest music festival rotates around three west-country cathedral towns, and this year it’s Gloucester’s turn. The cathedral’s historic organ has just been renovated, and it will take on a starring role in Poulenc’s Organ Concerto, and in the wild, almost pagan-sounding Glagolitic Mass by Czech composer Leoš Janáček. One of the great friends and supporters of the festival was Edward Elgar, and to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the Elgar Society, several of his best-loved works will be performed, including his First Symphony, Sea Pictures, and – to close the festival – his mighty oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.

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