1 The Kaufmann Residency
Jonas Kaufmann, the most celebrated tenor of today, arrives at the Barbican for a four-event residency. He begins with a recital with pianist Helmut Deutsch, before a pair of orchestral concerts in which he sings the first act of Wagner’s Die Walküre with Antonio Pappano and the LSO, and Strauss’s Four Last Songs with Jochen Rieder and the BBCSO.
Barbican Hall, EC2, Saturday 4 February to Monday 13 February
2 Brabbins Conducts Tippett
Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra continue their cycle of the Tippett symphonies with the second symphony, whose sound world prepared the way for Tippett’s second opera King Priam. The symphony ends Brabbins’s programme, which also includes Ravel’s Piano Concerto For The Left Hand, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist.
City Halls, Glasgow, Thursday 9 February
3 Sāvitri
The second half of Nicholas Collon’s all-Holst programme with the City Of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is inevitably devoted to The Planets. But before that unfailingly popular suite, Collon conducts a rare concert performance of Holst’s finest opera, the haunting one-acter Sāvitri.
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wednesday 8 February
4 Méhul: The First Romantic
The Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment and conductor Jonathan Cohen open up a forgotten chapter in the history of music at the turn of the 19th century with a programme built around the works of Etienne Méhul, one of the precursors of Romanticism. There are arias and overtures from Méhul’s operas, alongside pieces by his predecessors and contemporaries, Gluck, Mozart, Salieri and Beethoven.
St John’s Smith Square, SW1, Friday 10 February
