All London events
London 2025/26
Explore our brand new season.
Harmony with Nature
Harmony with Nature aims to put music at the centre of the most relevant of debates. We’ll marvel at oceans, forests, caves, mountains and wildlife through masterpieces of an era that saw nature as a mirror of human emotion – but also, perhaps, experienced it more immediately and organically than in the digital age.
Closer to our own time, voices as diverse as Duke Ellington, John Luther Adams, Gustavo Díaz-Jerez and Anna Thorvaldsdottir have all found an unquenchable source of creative energy in the processes of nature – whether river deltas or volcanic eruptions. For composers such as Anna Korsun, Gabriela Lena Frank and Terence Blanchard (whose powerful meditation on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina receives its UK premiere), humanity enters the picture. As destroyer or protector? Or simply as an organic, inextricable part of nature itself?
Phoenix Lands
‘20th-century music from Central Europe has always held a special fascination for me. In Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland (as they are now), composers wrote with a deep sense of pride in their nations, amid the jeopardy of political turmoil. Pieces are seasoned with the unique rhythm and flavour of each individual language, and speak with both an exoticism and a dramatic immediacy. From Bartók’s epic fairytale The Wooden Prince to Szymanowski’s exquisite Stabat Mater , alongside lesser-known works by Vítězslava Kaprálová and Grażyna Bacewicz, I’m excited about sharing my passion for the music of these regions, and exploring with you their unique, intoxicating musical languages.’
Edward Gardner, Principal Conductor
