In his Symphony No. 8, Antonín Dvořák captured his delight to be alive − his sheer enchantment in the face of existence. Surely the most blissful symphony the Czech composer wrote, it is a work overflowing with joyous fanfares and the beauty of the natural…
Sir John Rutter returns to Oxford for another Christmas celebration in the company of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Merton College Choir and the Choristers of Winchester Cathedral. Sir John’s musical fable Brother Heinrich’s Christmas forms the centrepiece of a programme that features carols and Christmas music old and new including…
John Rutter returns to Oxford for another Christmas celebration in the company of the Choir of Merton College, with soloists Susannah Hill and Jonathan Brown. Gerald Finzi’s seasonal cantata In terra pax − his last major work − forms the centrepiece of a programme that…
Two decades in the making, the first of Johannes Brahms’s symphonies is a powerful drama of heroism and defiance whose journey to victory over torment contains as much intimacy as grandeur. This is a symphonic struggle on Brahms’s own lyrical, melancholy-tinged terms with hints of the delicate nobility that…
Marios Papadopoulos takes the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra through the momentous symphonic dance that is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, a work whose pounding, marching and pirouetting permanently realigned western music’s fundamental relationship between rhythm and harmony. Another of our own musicians, Concertmaster Carmine Lauri, is the soloist in the most lyrical…
Beethoven’s primary concern in his radiant Mass in C major was ‘not God or princes, but the human being entering the church.’ A combination of spirituality and humanity can be felt in almost every bar of the piece, which treated the text and sentiments of the Mass as they had…
Drama and suffering lie at the heart of Bach’s concentrated depiction of Christ’s arrest, rendition and execution, the St John Passion. But this probing, unsettling yet beautiful work is also one of Bach’s most optimistic, ending with a confident look to the future that invites…
Angela Gheorghiu, one of the most glamorous and gifted opera singers of our time, returns to perform with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra to close the season at the Sheldonian Theatre. Together, they will celebrate a composer to whom she has dedicated a lifetime: Puccini. After landmark appearances as his heroines…
Legendary violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter makes a welcome return to Oxford in what promises to be a phenomenal performance. Passion sings its way through the second half of the concert: ecstasy courses through Strauss’s depiction of the hedonist Don Juan, while love flows through the climactic tension of the most arresting…
Between them, Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber defined the orchestral sound of America in the first half of the 20th century. From Copland’s simple sounds of the open prairie to the emotional depths of Samuel Barber’s heart-rending harmonies, this is music that could have come…