Classical preview

Visits from three of the world’s most famous orchestras make the headline news for 2017, the Bergen Philharmonic the first to arrive with a Sheffield City Hall concert featuring their recently installed Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner, in music by Elgar and Walton (January 19).

Leeds Town Hall hosts the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra the following week in a programme including Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (January 28), their major national rivals, the Moscow Philharmonic, also coming to Leeds with the virtuoso show-piece, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, to close their evening (May 13). The first of two great choral works, Verdi’s Requiem, brings together the Leeds Festival and Philharmonic Choruses with the Bournemouth Symphony (Leeds Town Hall, May 20), but they will be much outnumbered by the combined York University Chorus and Orchestra in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast performed in the splendour of York Minster (June 14). English Touring Opera present new productions of Puccini’s Tosca and Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience at Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre (March 20 & 21) and in York’s Theatre Royal (April 7 & 8), while spectacular presentations of Puccini’s La Boheme and Verdi’s Aida come from Opera and Ballet International at Bradford’s Alhambra Theatre (February 5 & 6). On a much smaller scale, Leeds Lieder Festival 2017 has an international star-studded line-up for a series of recitals at the Leeds College of Music (April 21-27), and Northern Aldborough have announced their Festival dates from June 22 to July 1.