Have a look at our new season which begins at Sinfonia Smith Square on 6 October 2025 with the enchanting music for Stravinsky's complete ballet The Firebird. Symphonies by Brahms, Nielsen and Ruth Gipps, concertos by Dvořák and Grieg, and music by Bernstein, Copland, Martinů, Shchedrin as well as Elfrida Andrée, Boris Blacher, Doreen Carwithen, James MacMillan. The season finale includes John Adams's hypnotic choral and orchestral masterpiece Harmonium with our friends Epiphoni The concerts are at Sinfonia Smith Square, Fairfield Halls and Cadogan Hall and include two afternoon performances, and guest conductor Chloé van Soeterstède - conductor. The first two concerts are available to book now - we look forward to seeing you there! (fb)

We begin our 2025/26 season with a performance of Stravinsky’s complete ballet The Firebird. Written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the work – described as “a supreme example of how music can evoke a mood” – catapulted Stravinsky to international fame. Inspired by Russian fairy tales, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who enlists the help of the magical Firebird to battle the evil Koschei in his castle. The concert opens with Rodion Shchedrin’s Concerto for Orchestra No.1, ‘Naughty Limericks’ (1963), a virtuosic single-movement work. Impish, humorous and energetic, it incorporates a number of Russian folk tunes. KSO also performs Martinů’s Les fresques de Piero della Francesca (1955), which pays homage to the Italian artist’s cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross (around 1452-66), an early Renaissance masterpiece that Martinů had admired in the Tuscan town of Arezzo in 1954. (fb)