Tag Archives: Benjamin Britten

Talking Heads: James Baillieu

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In this second interview centred around this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, James Baillieu talks to Ben Hogwood about the art of picture painting on the piano in music by Schubert and Britten. Though the festival has since passed, Arcana publishes this interview that also focuses on his Live At The Met album with soprano Lise Davidsen, as well as his work with baritone Benjamin Appl.

Picture credit: David Ruano

My first question to pianist James Baillieu is to ask him to recall his first connection with the Aldeburgh Festival. “The first time I went to the festival was when I was a kid. I have a connection through the Young Artist Programme, but my dad’s mother lived there. A couple of times, as kids from South Africa, we spent summers in Aldeburgh. As a grown-up it would have been the second year of my postgrad studies, where I did one of the masterclasses, and I was chosen to do one of the concerts in the Jubilee Hall the following year. The concert was with the soprano Katherine Broderick, and we did some Clara Schumann, Mendelssohn songs and Robert Schumann.”

Has James always gravitated towards playing piano with singers? “I would say the balance is probably 60/40, between vocal and instrumental repertoire. When I trained in South Africa I was doing a lot of solo repertoire, but in Cape Town there is a huge opera school, so I ended up doing a lot of vocal repertoire just for fun. Coming to London was really a focus of training, and I found I loved the fusion of text and music, and had a very instinctive understanding of voices. I found I could play in a way that could highlight that. It was a lucky thing that I ended up specialising in this field, because it suits the way I play and my instincts.”

The spirit of collaboration also appeals. “What I really love about working with people is that that I’m lucky to have a handful of long-term partnerships. We do a lot together, and there is real trust in the relationship. That’s when it can be really exciting because our job is to empower our partners and make them sound the best version of themselves. That often by being very supportive, but also by being difficult, pushing in a different way to create something. When you have these strong partnerships, you can do that and things can be musically alive and interesting. It’s having the trust to change something, but also knowing if it’s a bad day, and people aren’t feeling well, then helping navigate through difficult areas. It’s having the in-depth knowledge of someone’s instrument.”

With Aldeburgh as our subject matter, talk inevitably turns to the music of Benjamin Britten. Baillieu’s first encounter was the folk song arrangements, which left a lasting impact. “I found that very interesting. I think Britten is one of the most musical people. I love the recordings of his song accompaniments. I found the folk song arrangements really fascinating in a clever way, because simple shifts of tonalities and use of gesture highlights the text in a very natural way. That was a window into his music, and then early in my postgraduate studies I worked with Allan Clayton on Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his. At first I didn’t quite get it, but then it suddenly clicked. The notes aren’t always the most obvious, but it’s gesture, colour and musicality that comes across. The notes are sometimes quite random!”

Britten’s music, we agree, has a habit of drawing people back. “Canticle I is such a personal tribute to Peter Pears, and you feel such genuine respect in the writing, respect for music and gesture.” James is fully aware of the importance of the piano in Britten’s songwriting. “Allan and I did this at the beginning of our studies, but then a couple of years ago we completed all the Britten cycles at the Wigmore Hall, and it was amazing to see the variety of everything. Just last week I worked with another tenor, David Butt Philip, and we did The Holy Sonnets of John Donne in Tokyo. The Japanese people loved it! They love serious things and those are very serious. It’s a wonderful cycle, really satisfying to play.”

Britten’s music does indeed travel well. “I think also he had a good sense of entrepreneurship, and he knew how to make a show.” The John Donne sonnets were written in response to a visit to the Belsen concentration camp in 1945, where Britten gave a concert with violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Baillieu recreated this concert at Aldeburgh with Maria Wloszczowska. “She’s a wonderful player, and being from Poland brings something very meaningful. Britten’s beliefs are about peace, and with the state of the world right now it felt right to bring something meaningful, to focus on that.”

At the heart of Aldeburgh is the new Festival Academy, of which Baillieu is a director with one of his regular partners, soprano Lise Davidsen, Nicky Spence, Caroline Dowdle and Julia Faulkner. He reflects on the festival’s attendance. “For me the unique thing is that the audience has been very well trained. They trust the festival and challenge themselves. They’re not scared of anything, which is very different to a lot of festivals right now where it’s all about getting the biggest stars to sell the most number of tickets. That doesn’t have a real curiosity. My role is fabulous because the artists really invest in everything the young artists do.”

Baillieu himself is a graduate of the YCAT scheme, one of the most successful and supportive enterprises for young artists. “I feel enormously lucky and grateful that I had all these wonderful opportunities”, he says warmly. “YCAT was pivotal in helping me become the artist that I needed to become. I feel very honoured that the custodianship of this young artist programme that was very pivotal in in in my development has been granted to me. The climate for young artists right now is pretty brutal. Loads of schemes have been shut down and competitions reduced or cut. I wanted to bring the ethos and legacy that Britain and Pears created with this young artist programme, to keep all the cultural enrichment and deep musical training, but to make sure we respond to the musical world as it looks today. If I was graduating tomorrow, things would look very different now, and it’s making sure that as an organisation we’re responding to that.”

James clearly relishes the thought of giving a lot back through teaching and support. “I was so well supported that I really want to do what I can to help, because there’s so much fabulous talent around. The Britten Pears programme works with other organisations to amplify opportunities as much as possible. I keep saying ‘young people’, I still feel like a young artist! Career-wise I couldn’t be happier, but it’s still very fresh in my mind, so I think it’s useful that I know what it feels like to build this pathway.”

With soprano Lise Davidsen, Baillieu gave a full concert of Schubert lieder – a marked contrast to the big stage roles she has also inhabited. “Lisa is one of my close musical partners and also a very close friend. It has been super exciting to be part of her journey, and for the last decade or so we have done various mixed programmes. For the last one we put in a set of Schubert, and it was amazing just how well it fitted. It wasn’t always the most obvious fit to me, but somehow the magnitude of her voice, with something like Strauss songs, you do feel a little bit shortchanged with just a piano version rather than a huge orchestra. But with the simplicity of Schubert, it somehow works better.”

The listeners agreed. “Because the response to that small shipper group was so overwhelmingly and kind of universally positive, we decided to be brave and put together a whole evening of Schubert.” Schubert features as part of the recently released Decca album Live at the Met, where Davidsen and Baillieu added music by Puccini, Richard Strauss, Sibelius and Grieg. The concert took place in September 2023, and the pianist remembers it vividly. “It was an extraordinary experience, and was equally terrifying! The day before I’ll never forget, because in America they have all these unions, and all the stagehands were there even when I needed the piano to be moved 10 centimetres to the right – just two of us in a venue for orchestra, chorus and principles. The music staff were amazingly supportive, and they put an acoustic shell around the piano, which really helped. When we rehearsed the day before I felt immediately calm, because the acoustic is actually fabulous. On the day itself I felt like a rock start. The audience was just so joyous, and there was such a good energy from the hall, that I just loved it.”

The concert (above) included music by Richard Strauss, whose music presents all sorts of challenges for the pianist. “They are very virtuosic and dense”, he agrees. “Most of my training I thought about the famous book by Gerald Moore, Am I Too Loud, but with Lise it’s “Am I too soft?!” If I know that I’m going to do a patch with her I started beefing up myself, whereas with other things it’s about finesse and scaling down. It’s a different challenge.”

Baillieu works with a wide variety of artists, including baritone Benjamin Appl and flautist Adam Walker. Does one complement the other? “I’ve been very lucky that my partnerships have generally been long term and very close, and I have worked with a lot of vocal partners and niche instruments – flute, clarinet, and trombone, working with Peter Moore recently. I actually haven’t done all that much kind of traditional Beethoven sonatas, but I don’t mind. Now I have quite a close partnership with viola player Timothy Ridout and have learned a lot of interesting repertoire.”

Both are YCAT alumni. “Someone like Yuja Wang would not need that, because she had a very clear trajectory and was a big star and won everything. YCAT helped people like me who were perhaps musically interesting but without a completely clear pathway. I guess those like-minded souls stick together, and so a lot of my partners have been from YCAT days. They’re very brave, taking the ‘interesting misfits’ and putting them into the mainstream!”

Returning to Schubert, Baillieu filmed Schubert’s Winterreise with Appl under the direction of John Bridcut. With Appl he also worked on the music of György Kurtág – subject of a previous Arcana interview. “It was an unforgettable, intense and unrelenting few days!” he says with a glint in the eye, “but I was very grateful to have had that experience.” And what was it like filming Winterreise with Appl in the Alps? “It was also challenging. In our partnership, Ben and I have done some very strange things in our lives together! What we hadn’t quite taken on board is how different filming is to recording, and that the focus is completely visual. We had to fight a lot for giving the sound equal importance, but if you had the heating on in the tower it made a noise! We managed to find a happy medium, but the visuals are very striking. Ben then had to go and sing outside with just an earpiece, so I prerecorded some of the songs and he went and did that outside.” The weather also proved unpredictable. “When we arrived, there was absolutely no snow, so we thought the whole project was going to be cancelled, but thankfully the snow came in the evening and there was something to film!”

What would James say are the principal qualities of a good Schubert pianist, when it comes to the songs? “I always feel that what we get from Schubert is someone that understands humanity in sound. I always said I think he would have been a genius psychotherapist, because he manages to get the human condition into sound. In terms of music there are a lot of Classical influences, the elegance and structure of phrases, but I think it’s empathy. If you are empathetic, that’s when Schubert is most successful, because he was obviously very empathetic. He is also unique with the incredible friendships with various poets with whom he had intense connections. He was clearly something of a “connector” – but empathy is the main one I would say.”

His music has proved far reaching. “With Ben we have taken Schubert to Hong Kong, and he’s done projects in India and Australia. It speaks to people, there is a universality about it, and I think it’s because he understands the human spirit. There is also the simplicity. That’s what makes Schubert so hard, because there is a timeless elegance, and a perfect quality that makes it a little bit scary. But there is nothing better than some of those songs!”

You can read more about this year’s Aldeburgh Festival at the Britten Pears Arts website, with full concert information and details. For biographical information on James Baillieu himself, you can visit his artist page

Published post no.2,940 – Tuesday 7 July 2026

Podcast – Whisky High Notes

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by Ben Hogwood

In something of a rarity for the Arcana pages, I’m very pleased to say I have made a guest appearance on Naomi Belshaw‘s very excellent Whisky High Notes podcast. The idea is to pick four meaningful pieces of classical music and present them to Naomi, who thoughtfully and creatively pairs each with a whisky.

My appearance is on episode four, which you can watch below:

I would strongly encourage you to watch the rest of the series, whose contributors so far include artistic director of King’s Place Sam McShane, viola player Dan Shalliday and composer Dobrinka Tabakova. Click here to access the Whisky High Notes homepage

Published post no.2,930 – Saturday 27 June 2026

Talking Heads: Ryan Wigglesworth

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In the first of two interviews themed around the Aldeburgh Festival, Featured Artist Ryan Wigglesworth talks to Ben Hogwood about the influence of his mentor, Oliver Knussen, and the inspiration he takes from the music of Britten, Debussy and Bruckner.

Picture credits: Benjamin Ealovega (Ryan Wigglesworth, Steven Osborne), Mark Allan (Oliver Knussen), Sussie Ahlberg (Sophie Bevan), Lawrence Power (Giorgia Bertazzi)

Ryan Wigglesworth is a musician of many disciplines – and for half an hour he has joined us to talk about his work as a composer, conductor and pianist, specifically within the rarefied world of the Aldeburgh Festival, where he is a Featured Artist for 2026.

The festival has played a key part in his career, as I ask him to cast his mind back to the first time he visited. “My first contact with Aldeburgh was through the young artists programme, which is where I first met Ollie Knussen – that would have been 2000 or 2001. I had forced my parents, when I was much younger, to take me to Aldeburgh. It must have been the time when the Humphrey Carpenter biography of Britten came out. I read that biography and begged my parents to drive from Sheffield so I could see the place and go on a pilgrimage. It’s been a very special place to me for such a long time, and since the turn of the century, when I met Ollie, that became the most important musical friendship and mentorship of my life. I spent so much time there and was virtually living at his house for a period. It’s a home to me.”

It is striking in conversations with artists that worked with Knussen, the speed with which his name comes up, and the affection it provokes. In this case, Wigglesworth met his mentor through the soprano Claire Booth. “Claire and I were undergraduates together”, he says, “and she was on the course at Snape. I tagged along, because I wasn’t officially there as a student that first year. Claire and I had already learned his Whitman Settings, and we kept asking if we could sing it to him. He was dreading it was going to be awful, but he finally caved in, and we performed it. I think he was very touched, and I think that was the beginning of him thinking, “Maybe they’re not so bad, these two!”

As with fellow-students, Knussen (above) left a lasting musical and personal footprint. “It was my education. I must have sat in hundreds of hours of rehearsals with the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. I could never understand why no-one else was there, and it was the same when I used to go to Boulez’s rehearsals. That was my education, because Ollie’s rehearsals were masterclasses in time management, efficiently sorting our problems, and that pristine conducting technique. I’m so grateful to have had that as my starting point, and with such a dominant creative force in your life, it takes a while to free yourself from their way of doing it, and finding your own way, but it still informs everything I do. When it comes down to it, it’s still about respect for the text, and that the composer is the most important thing – not the performer’s ego!”

He considers further. “You couldn’t not be learning, just spending time with him, sitting at the kitchen table. As everyone knew him understood, he had obsessions at a particular moment in time. He would be gorging on the music of Busoni, or whatever it happened to be that week, so we’d go through tonnes of his music – and that’s an incredible education, going through those scores together – and learning how he marked up scores. It was my starting point, and I’ve developed it in how to learn a score thoroughly, especially when I’ve had to learn something quite quickly, stepping in for a cancellation. I remember having to learn Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in two days, and it was incredible to fall back on that technique of inhabiting a score.”

The influence of Knussen spreads to the programming for the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival, where his innovations can be felt in Wigglesworth’s repertoire choices – such as the pairing of his own Piano Concerto and that by Ravel, both to be performed with Steven Osborne (above) as soloist. “It’s a bit of a risk, that one!” laughs Ryan, “putting your piece alongside one of the greatest concertos ever written. That was something I began to think about much more deeply spending time with him, the way pieces resonate together. It’s a very subtle and complex business, and of course you get it wrong sometimes, but that’s fine because you don’t know until you do it, very often. It’s one of the great pleasures to have the freedom you have at Aldeburgh where your wings aren’t clipped. It’s worrying that so much of concert life is becoming so narrow, reduced in its scope and imaginative adventure.”

We reflect on his role as Featured Artist at Aldeburgh this year – a chance to spread musical wings? “It’s very special to be able to think about bringing the different aspects of what I do under one roof, because they’re all sides of the same business of making music. Of course they feature in different ways. Playing chamber music is so important because it’s my only direct contact with producing the sound, and I need that. Yet at the same time, if I’m conducting Pelléas et Mélisande, I hope I’m becoming a better composer as a result!”

His reference is to Debussy’s only opera, with which the festival opens on Friday 12 June. “You can’t not learn from every page of a score like that”, he says, “about how to be a better composer and holding the mystery. I don’t think I’ve ever met a composer for whom that’s not the greatest opera ever written, because it’s so difficult to fathom how he did it! It is so elusive, you can’t see how he put it together. The more time you spend in the orbit of masterpieces like that, it’s stimulating for me as a composer, and to spend time with the orchestra. It’s such an organism, this group of individual musicians with a collective personality, sound and ethos – it’s extremely mysterious! That was the great thing about spending all those hours in rehearsal with Ollie”, he reflects, “that’s what you’re soaking up, how these groups function, and how you balance the double basses and harps – what needs to be done on the most basic practical level.”

The orchestra to which he refers in Pelléas is the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, of whom he has been chief conductor since September 2022. “They are uniquely versatile”, he says, “When you think of what they do in the Tectonics festival, with Ilan Volkov, from the most experimental new music – from that to Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony – and they approach it with care and flair. City Halls is so good for classical repertoire, too, and they are incredibly stylish in Mozart, which is such a difficult thing. It’s incredible what they can do, and in such short spaces of time. To be able to flick the switch is amazing, with something like Birtwistle’s Earth Dances, which we performed with Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony at the BBC Proms last year. To achieve that in such little rehearsal time would have been almost unimaginable in the mid-1980s. The speed with which things are inhabited is incredible.”

On a much smaller scale is The Poet’s Echo, a concert where Wigglesworth will take to the piano, joining soprano Sophie Bevan – his wife – in a programme marking the centenary of the birth of Russian powerhouse Galina Vishnevskaya. Along with her own husband, Mstislav Rostropovich, Galina played an important role in the career and life of Benjamin Britten. Britten’s song cycle The Poet’s Echo was completed in 1965 for Vishnevskaya, and will feature alongside Wigglesworth’s own settings of George Herbert, Till Dawning – written for Sophie (above). “The Poet’s Echo is new for both of us”, he says, “and it is wonderful to have a major work of Britten’s to come to fresh and learn together. We’ve done selections of the folksongs for a good few years, now.”

He has great affection for them. “I love them so much – and those accompaniments in the Britten folk song arrangements, each one is a sort of bull’s eye! There are one or two very focused, simple ideas, and it comes back to Britten’s economy.” A quality Britten and Knussen shared? “Exactly – a supremely practical approach. I learned from Ollie, and almost at Britten’s feet. Ollie’s Dad was so involved with Britten as a conductor, taking part in the premiere of works like Curlew River, and Ollie was there as a kid, taking all this up. He always said about Britten that he could have been a grandmaster chess player, or even an army general. The ability to move things in the abstract, in his head, was so strong, and that extends to planning the entire act of an opera in his mind before committing it to paper. He had an extraordinary ability to manipulate things in space and knowing, in the operas, when to introduce a colour, treating the instruments of the orchestra like individual characters, and knowing when to hold one back for dramatic purposes.”

He reflects further. “It’s about finding the off-kilter but logical solution. A great example is the ‘interview chords’ in Billy Budd – they’re every way of harmonising the F major triad. He’s working through a secret, and it’s absolutely right, a key emotional part of the opera.”

Returning to Wigglesworth’s own music, there is a significant premiere with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra on Saturday 27 June, in the form of his Viola Concerto, written for Lawrence Power (above). “It’s quite difficult to talk about, because I’ve not long finished it!” he confesses. “I’m still too close to the process of having written it, but I haven’t heard it yet. Like all of my recent pieces, and I hope my pieces in the future – they’re all my reactions to who is performing, and who I’m writing for. I think I would struggle now if I were commissioned by a musician or orchestra I don’t know, I’d struggle to have ideas. I’m so lucky with Sophie, or Steven Osborne, who’s playing my piano concerto at the beginning of the festival, to have these long term, meaningful relationships. With Laurence, we first worked together years ago. I wrote these Five Little Waltzes for him during lockdown. He’s such a one-off, and his artistic personality is so strong. He has this incredible sound, and variety of colour, and the piece came from my reaction to that.”

He describes the work. “It’s slightly unusual – in three movements, which sounds very standard, but it’s slow-fast-slow. It was a deliberate attempt to try to achieve something a bit more spacious than anything I’ve attempted before. I suppose it allows the viola to occupy a lyrical space. It’s not a battle between soloist and orchestra, more a fluid relationship. It comes back to the music that becomes more meaningful as a performer. Like Bruckner – I love this music so much, and what can I learn from it? Bruckner’s vision is so personal, but there are things to be learned – how to create a long wave, a big paragraph. It’s finding the things that challenge you, because in the past I’ve struggled to create a genuinely long line. You could say Britten concentrated on little cells of ideas, but it’s nice to think about how to achieve something that doesn’t come naturally, that can become more a part of your make-up.”

Debussy comes to mind as a composer capable of uniting the two ways of working, which returns us to the festival’s opening night. “To have created Pelléas as his first dramatic work, and to have got it that right… it was a long gestation process written it a long time before it was premiered, but it’s unlike anything else!” he says, under Debussy’s spell. “As he admitted himself there is a lot of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov in it, but these scenes tend to be conversations between two characters, with the function of these orchestral interludes, which seem so necessary. To think they were added so late on in the process, just to cover the stage move time, is remarkable – but you need them because of the intensity of each scene. You need the space afterwards to process what you’ve just heard, for the brain to catch up. It’s an incredible living organism, when you’re in it – and it really does grip you! This score is just as much like a drug as Wagner is said to be. The more you spend time with it, the more you need it!”

You can read more about this year’s Aldeburgh Festival at the Britten Pears Arts website, with full concert information and details. For biographical information on Ryan Wigglesworth himself, you can visit his artist page

Published post no.2,915 – Friday 12 June 2026

On Record – The Peter Jacobs Anthology: Twentieth Century British Piano Music (Heritage Records)

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Peter Jacobs (piano)

Bax Winter Waters (1915)
Baines Preludes nos.1,3 & 6 (1919)
Benjamin Scherzino (1936)
Bliss Suite: Polonaise (1926)
Britten Sonatina Romantica: Moderato (1940)
Hold Tango (1975)
Howells Procession (1920)
Leigh Eclogue (1940)
Mayer Three Pieces from Calcutta-Nagar (1993)
Parry Scherzo in F major (pub 1922)
Quilter Summer Evening (1916)
Scott Egyptian Boat Song (1913)
Searle Vigil: France 1940-1944 (1944)
Seiber Scherzando Capriccioso (1953)
Shaw Roundabouts (1925)
Sterndale Bennett Presto agitato in F# minor Op.24/5
Stevenson A Wheen Tunes for Bairns Tae Spiel (1967)
Warren Second Sonata: Monody (1977)
Woodferne-Finden Kashmiri Song (1903)

Heritage Records HTGCD159 [76’40”]
Producer / Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Recorded 25 May 2021 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Besides reissuing his already extensive catalogue for other labels, Heritage has also made a number of new recordings by Peter Jacobs, with this album the first in what so far amounts to three volumes of miniatures and standalone pieces as drawn from his extensive repertoire.

Regular readers of Arcana will have come across reviews of the second and third volumes in this series, to which is now added this first instalment that ranges across the extent of Jacobs’ interest in and inclination towards unfamiliar though rewarding music by British composers.

What’s the music like?

Launched by Martin Shaw’s ebullient encore alighting on all two-dozen keys, this anthology continues with the harmonically acerbic second movement (of four) from Arthur Bliss’ early Suite, followed by music of elegant poignancy by Walter Leigh. John Mayer is heard in three from his 18 vignettes evoking sights and sounds of Calcutta (sic), with that by Roger Quilter a minor masterpiece of serenity infused with regret.

Màtyás Seiber contributes music whose liveliness and recalcitrance are entirely characteristic, with something ‘completely different’ in Amy Woodforde-Finden’s appealingly descriptive and once-ubiquitous number. Few are likely to recognize Herbert Howells as composer of a rhythmically combative piece that is (relatively) better known in its orchestral guise, while that from Arthur Benjamin could be no-one else given its playful insouciance. Dedicated ‘‘To my friends of the Fighting French Forces’’, Humphrey Searle’s evocation of war is the more powerful for its overall restraint and could well be considered the single-most impressive piece featured on this collection.

Hubert Parry is heard at his most vivacious and uninhibited; an ideal foil to Cyril Scott who, though he associated Egypt with (his own) past existences, focusses on melody of the most poetic. Much the earliest piece here, that by William Sterndale Bennett is the fifth in a six-movement suite – its deftness and agility in telling contrast to the incremental display of the opening movement from Raymond Warren’s Second Sonata. Three out of a larger sequence of preludes by William Baines constitute an object-lesson in making more out of less, while the first movement of Benjamin Britten’s never-quite-completed Sonata Romantica evinces ingenuity and didacticism in equal measure. Ronald Stevenson often aspired to the lofty or profound in his music, but the four pieces in the suite recorded here are epigrams as laconic as they are engaging. The longest single item here, Arnold Bax’s piece is at once a visceral seascape, revealing psychological study or resourceful passacaglia – the climax of an album that ends in a disarming item by Trevor Hold such as ought to win its composer new friends.

Does it all work?

As an overall sequence, undoubtedly. Jacobs is as inclusive in his interpretative acumen as   in the breadth of his musical sympathies – thereby making for a collection that plays to his strengths as convincingly as it does to those of the 19 composers who are featured herein.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least in the knowledge this release was merely the first in an ongoing and most valuable series bringing unfamiliar music to the attention of inquiring listeners. Sound of clarity and definition, along with Jacobs’ detailed booklet notes, are further enhancements.

Listen / Buy

You can explore purchase options at the Heritage Records website. Click on the name to read more about pianist Peter Jacobs

Published post no.2,889 – Saturday 16 May 2026

News – The CBSO Announces New 2026-27 Season

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adapted from the press release:

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has announced its 2026–27 Season: a year of artistic ambition, civic pride and musical breadth under Music Director Kazuki Yamada. The season brings together major symphonic journeys – including Beethoven and Mahler cycles – with new commissions, international touring and landmark moments such as the CBSO Chorus’s 1000th performance. Looking both forwards and back, the orchestra returns to Coventry Cathedral for Britten’s War Requiem, while a wide‑ranging programme that embraces film, popular music and cross‑genre collaborations reflects the CBSO’s commitment to sharing exceptional music with the widest possible audiences.

Shaped by extensive listening to the people of Birmingham, the 2026-27 Season responds to a city where music plays a vital role in daily life, with 96% of residents saying it is important to them. Research also revealed a strong desire for live music and shared cultural experiences, with more than half of respondents valuing a ‘great night out’ with family and friends, alongside a growing appetite for diverse and cross‑genre programming. Embracing scale, risk and joy in equal measure, the new season opens on 17 September 2026.

Looking ahead to the new season, Emma Stenning, CEO at the CBSO comments: “Over the past two years we have listened closely to the people of Birmingham – through research, audience feedback and the work of our Community Board – and that dialogue has shaped a season designed to offer something for everyone. We continue our Mahler journey and present a complete Beethoven symphony cycle with our Music Director Kazuki Yamada, while welcoming Ilan Volkov as our new Principal Guest Conductor and Collaborative Artists Jess Gillam, Alice Sara Ott and Rushil Ranjan, each bringing fresh energy and ideas to the CBSO. Our return to Coventry Cathedral for Britten’s War Requiem will be a defining moment of the season, sharing a powerful message of peace that feels especially resonant today. Alongside this, film and pop concerts, cross‑cultural collaborations and our family programming allow us to broaden our audiences, reflect the diversity of our city and invest in the next generation of music‑lovers. We hope you’ll join us for a truly special year of music‑making.”

Full details can be found at the CBSO website

CBSO 2026-27 Season at a glance: 10 highlights

  1. War Requiem returns to Coventry Cathedral

For Remembrance Day, Kazuki Yamada brings Britten’s humanitarian masterpiece home to Coventry Cathedral, with a plea for peace as resonant now as the day it was written. A timeless, intensely moving meditation on man’s inhumanity to man, the CBSO gave the world premiere of the piece at Coventry Cathedral in 1962 and the Orchestra’s return in 2026 also marks 50-years since Benjamin Britten’s death. This performance will be followed by an international tour.

  • Mahler symphonies to open and close the season

KazukiYamada and the CBSO continue their Mahler cycle: a signature artistic journey that explores music grappling with life, death and renewal. The 2026-27 Season opens with Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, in a concert which also celebrates the 1000th performance of the CBSO Chorus. The season will close in June 2027 with Mahler’s 3rd Symphony.

  • Three Collaborative Artists redefining what an orchestra can do

This season sees the CBSO welcome Alice Sara Ott, Jess Gillam and Rushil Ranjan as Collaborative Artists, who each offer fresh perspectives and exciting programming across genres, venues and formats. Pianist Alice Sara Ott brings major concerto and chamber performances at home and on tour, saxophonist Jess Gillam appears as a soloist, presenter and creative collaborator across concerts and education projects, and composer‑producer Rushil Ranjan expands the orchestra’s sound world through his genre‑defying Orchestral Qawwali Project.

  • Beethoven’s full symphony cycle

Marking 200 years since Beethoven’s death, Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO will perform all nine symphonies in 2027, celebrating one of the most famous and enduring symphonic cycles of all time alongside performances of the Violin Concerto and a wide‑ranging programme of chamber music.

  • A major commitment to new music

In addition to exciting projects with CBSO’s Collaborative Artists – Alice Sara Ott, Jess Gillam and Rushil Ranjan – the CBSO’s first Composer in Residence, GRAMMY-nominated composer Anna Clyne, is central to the season; including the world premiere of her new viola concerto ‘Resonant Forms’ with Lawrence Power, a performance of PALETTE by the CBSO Orchestral Residency scheme, and a Decca recording of Glasslands with Jess Gillam and Alpesh Chauhan.

  • Ilan Volkov debut season

The CBSO will welcome Ilan Volkov for his first season as Principal Guest Conductor and repertoire will feature Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, Messiaen’s Turangalila and a Shakespeare inspired programme.

  • Film and pop music concerts

From Classic FM Hall of Fame and Jules Buckley’s Quincy Jones celebration to Guitar Heroes, ABBA and Home Alone – the CBSO season is packed with popular family-orientated concerts that celebrate milestones in popular culture. There will also be concerts that celebrate special anniversaries; such as  50 years of Star Wars: A New Hope and the 20th anniversary of Casino Royale in partnership with esk live and B:Music; and 25 years of the legendary film, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring presented by The Flying Music Company at BP Pulse Live.

  • Kazuki Yamada’s generous and joyful programming

The CBSO’s Music Director,Kazuki Yamada also champions programmes that invite audiences in through joy and familiarity this season, treating much‑loved repertoire with the same care, imagination and musical rigour as the symphonic canon. From a festive ‘double Nutcracker’ that sets Tchaikovsky alongside Duke Ellington’s sparkling reinvention, to a Night at the Opera with an all-star cast, celebrating the enduring power of great melody and drama.

  • Concerts for young children and families

From toddlers to teenagers, the CBSO’s family and Notelets concerts are presented by CBSO musicians and designed to remove barriers and spark a lifelong connection with music. Created especially for under‑6s, Notelets are joyful, interactive performances where children can sing, dance and discover orchestral instruments for the very first time, supported by free creative activities and opportunities to meet the musicians. Across the season, BSL‑interpreted family concerts further widen access, ensuring orchestral music is welcoming and inclusive for audiences of all ages.

  1. A season that embraces scale, risk and joy in equal measure

From vast, ambitious works such as Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and Weinberg’s rarely performed operatic epic The Passenger, to symphonic film, jazz‑inflected reimaginings and large‑scale popular orchestral projects, the season demonstrates a willingness to programme at full stretch – artistically, logistically and imaginatively. Rather than separating the serious from the celebratory, the CBSO places demanding contemporary and 20th‑century masterpieces alongside exuberant, high‑craft crossover, asserting that ambition, curiosity and pleasure can and should coexist on the same stage.

Kazuki Yamada, Music Director, CBSO, comments: “It brings me so much happiness to be looking forward to another season with this wonderful orchestra and our fantastic audiences. And what a year of music making it’s going to be: 18 concerts at home and another 21 across the UK and around the world. Wherever we perform, I am always proud to share the CBSO’s incredible energy, openness and spirit with our audiences.” The CBSO would also like to thank the many guest musicians, soloists and ensembles that will join them for the 2026–27 season.

Published post no.2,886 – Wednesday 13 May 2026