French Connections
Soprano Mary Bevan’s performance of Britten’s Les Illuminations, settings of poems by Rimbaud, is the centrepiece of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s French-themed programme, conducted by Ben Gernon. It ends with a Haydn symphony, No 84 in E flat, one of the set of six composed for Paris, and begins with a rarity, the overture to Joseph Bologne’s opera L’Amant Anonyme.
• Available on demand (£) until 12 February.
Wintermezzo
The Bergen Philharmonic’s streaming festival packs 16 concerts into four weeks – a mix of prerecorded and live events, with pianist Víkingur Ólafsson as artist-in-residence. Edward Gardner conducts most of the programmes, which include performances of Berio’s Rendering, Vasks’ Viola Concerto, Steen-Andersen’s Piano Concerto, along with Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh, Brahms’s Fourth Symphonies, and Sibelius’s Third and Seventh Symphonies and Tapiola.
• Festival streamed live until 12 February, and then available in the orchestra’s archive.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
The Bournemouth SO has replaced its planned February orchestral programme with chamber concerts. The series begins with a recital by pianist Paul Lewis (3 February) that includes a Mozart sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; after that members of the orchestra play a Mozart flute quartet and Beethoven’s Septet (10 February), and the BSO Wind Octet and Brass Ensemble join forces for Mozart, Handel, Dowland, Byrd and Bruckner (17 February).
• Livestreamed (£) from the Lighthouse, Poole, on 3, 10 and 17 February; each performance available on demand for 30 days afterwards.
London Symphony Orchestra
The LSO plans to stream concerts recorded at LSO St Luke’s each Thursday, but so far only one date for February has been confirmed. That’s a programme conducted by Simon Rattle, which includes Alberto Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes, dances from Roberto Gerhard’s ballet Don Quixote and Dvořák’s American Suite.
• Available free from 11 to 18 February, and afterwards on demand (£).
Der Freischütz
New opera productions are few and far between across Europe at the moment, but the Bavarian State Opera is going ahead with its staging of Weber’s masterpiece as an online-only event. The production, which updates the action to the underworld of today, is directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, with Pavel Černoch as Max and Golda Schultz as Agathe; Anna Prohaska is Ännchen and Kyle Ketelsen is Kaspar.
• Streamed live on 13 February, and available free on demand from 15 February to 17 March
Rapture and Revolution
The Australian Chamber Orchestra launches ACO StudioCasts, a monthly series of filmed concerts, which will feature contemporary works alongside works from the string-orchestra repertory. The first programme includes Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, with ACO director Richard Tognetti as the soloist, and Tognetti’s arrangements of music by Beethoven - the Cavatina from the String Quartet, Op 130, and the Grosse Fuge. Later concerts in the series include an appearance by flautist Emmanuel Pahud, and a performance of Pēteris Vasks’ Vox Amoris, which was written for Tognetti.
• Available on demand (£) from 17 February until 31 December.
OperaVision
Among this month’s selection of streamed shows two stand out. There’s a Pelléas et Mélisande from Geneva in a new production by choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, with designs by Marina Abramović; it’s conducted by Jonathan Nott, with Jacques Imbrailo and Mari Eriksmoen as the lovers, and Leigh Melrose as Golaud. And Norrlandsoperan’s Love & Politics is a curiosity, which brings together music from four of Verdi’s Schiller-based operas in a staging by Dan Turdén, conducted by Ville Matvejeff.
• Pelléas et Mélisande available on demand from 19 February until 19 August; Love & Politics available on demand from 27 February until 27 August.
Manchester Collective
Soprano Ruby Hughes joins the group for a programme ranging from the Renaissance to the present day. There’s music by John Dowland and John Tavener, alongside Debussy’s settings of Pierre Louÿs, Mahler’s Urlicht, and Caroline Shaw’s string quartet Valencia.
• Streamed live (£) from Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, on 21 February and available on demand until 28 February.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout is director and soloist in an all-Mendelssohn programme that prefaces the Concerto for violin, piano and orchestra – in which SCO leader Stephanie Gonley is the other soloist – with one of the early string symphonies, No 12 in G minor.
• Streamed on the SCO’s YouTube and Facebook channels from 25 February.
Manchester Camerata
Violinist Pekka Kuusisto conducts the Manchester Camerata in a programme that includes the world premiere of Daniel Kidane’s Be Still, and works by Dobrinka Tabakova, Aaron Copland and Michael Nyman; saxophonist Jess Gillam is the soloist.
• Streamed live from Stoller Hall, Manchester, on HarrisonParrott’s platform Virtual Circle, 26 February (£).
