1: Tectonics
The music festival curated by conductor Ilan Volkov now takes place each year in Reykjavík, Adelaide and Glasgow. As usual, Volkov is very much present in the latest incarnation of the latter; he’s conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony in two concerts, which will feature new works by Laurence Crane, Howard Skempton, Richard Emsley and Alwynne Pritchard.
Various venues, Glasgow, Sat & Sun
2: The Magic Flute
Concert stagings of Mozart’s operas directed and conducted by Iván Fischer have become a bit of a speciality of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. The latest comes to London this week, with a terrific cast led by Bernard Richter and Hanna-Elisabeth Müller as Tamino and Pamina.
3: The Dark Mirror
Composer Hans Zender’s re-imagining of Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise with chamber-orchestra accompaniment has already established its own niche in the repertory. Now it gets a multimedia staging, in a collaboration between tenor Ian Bostridge and director, designer and video artist Netia Jones, with accompaniment from the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Baldur Brönnimann.
Barbican Theatre, EC2, Thu to 14 May
4: In Parenthesis
Welsh National Opera is celebrating its 70th birthday with the premiere of an opera specially commissioned from Iain Bell. This year also marks the centenary of the battle of the Somme, and Bell’s work is based on David Jones’s poem, about an English-Welsh regiment facing the horrors of the trenches.
Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Fri to 3 Jun
5: Messiah
The Dunedin Consort’s performances of Handel’s best-loved oratorio have become a regular Christmas treat for audiences in Scotland. Now John Butt and his choir and orchestra come south to show the capital what it has been missing.
