First Night Of The Proms
Two of the season’s themes – Russian music and the cello – feature in Prom 1. Sol Gabetta is the soloist in Elgar’s cello concerto, while Sakari Oramo conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overture from Romeo And Juliet.
Royal Albert Hall, SW7, Friday 15 July
York early music festival
Shakespeare provides the theme for this year’s event, which is subtitled Fairies, Witches And Aerial Beings. The 400th anniversary of his death is marked by music from the Elizabethan theatre and on the theme of the supernatural, including Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (Wed) and a restoration-era musical version of The Tempest (Thu).
Various venues, York, to 16 July
Herbert Howells’s Cello Concerto
Three quarters of a century after he composed them, the two movements of Herbert Howells’s concerto finally get a public airing in the very cathedral where he was a chorister in the 1900s.
Gloucester Cathedral, Sat 9 July
Falstaff
An end-of-season concert performance of an opera that became a regular fixture in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s calendar during Andris Nelsons’s years as music director. The orchestra’s chief guest conductor Edward Gardner takes over the tradition this year; he conducts Verdi’s comic masterpiece, with Ambrogio Maestri as the fat knight.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wednesday 13 July
Penarth chamber music festival
There’s something for almost everyone in this four-day end-of-the-pier show, including piano quintets by Dvořák, Brahms and Adès, and string quartets by Haydn, Beethoven and Janáček.
Penarth Pier Pavilion, Thursday 14 to 17 Jul
