Barbican Presents

Travel from rural Finland to bustling Manhattan and find the threads between J S Bach and Philip Glass as Pekka Kuusisto and Nico Muhly share their limitless musical world.

Jonas Kaufmann, universally celebrated as ‘the world’s greatest tenor’ (Telegraph), joins his old friend Sir Antonio Pappano for an evening of song. 

Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil go to Hell and back in the first UK concert performance of Thomas Adès’s astonishing Dante – a fire-and-brimstone ballet music trilogy based on Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel put an unmistakably French polish on the baroque grandeur of Handel’s coronation anthems, including the spine-tingling ceremonial Zadok the Priest.

Thomas Adès’s 2004 opera recreates Shakespeare’s enchanted isle on his own, utterly magical terms in what the New York Times called ‘one of the most inspired, audacious and personal operas in years.’

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla has announced she is expecting her second child in August 2020 and will therefore no longer be able to conduct this concert.

A vision of eternity, as violinist Pekka Kuusisto and three friends explore the ecstatic musical universe of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.

Time becomes space, as the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir bring J S Bach and Arvo Pärt into spiritual and emotional communion.

Hear a concert from the one-of-a-kind violin virtuoso who possesses ‘the most personal sound of any violinist now alive’ (Telegraph).

Joyce DiDonato’s ‘Favourite Things’ – operatic arias from the 17th and 18th centuries – are brought spectacularly to life by a true vocal superstar.

Evgeny Kissin reaffirms his credentials as one of the greatest pianists of our time in a programme that contrasts Chopin’s romantic miniatures with three very different 20th-century masters.

Our concert featuring Sheku & Isata Kanneh-Mason will now be going ahead on Sun 4 Jul with some minor programme alterations.

One of the pre-eminent pianists of our time embraces one of the repertoire’s profoundest challenges, as Piotr Anderszewski plays a selection of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues. 

The one-of-a-kind violinist leads the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in music from J S Bach to Missy Mazzoli: ‘Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart’ (Time Out New York).

The LA Phil launch their 2021 residency with a supercharged rendition of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and are joined by Vikingur Ólafsson in a new piano concerto by fellow-Icelander Daníel Bjarnason.

Gustavo Dudamel and his Los Angeles Philharmonic close their Barbican residency with Mahler’s great song of loss and love, and Gabriella Smith’s shimmering new vision of the California skies.

‘When Perahia is at his best, one can only wonder at the polish and luminous beauty of his playing’ wrote Andrew Clements in The Guardian. This solo recital should be something genuinely special.

Virtuosity, intensity and emotion in the raw: masterpieces by Beethoven, Janáček and a new work by Thomas Adès show off the Australian Chamber Orchestra at their super-charged best. 

Igor Levit joins one of the truly great US orchestras and Franz Welser-Möst in Mozart at his most playful, Scriabin at his most romantic, and Thomas Adès at his most thrillingly original.

One of Britain’s most talked-about young pianists gives an imaginative and characteristic solo recital, encompassing works from Beethoven and Clara Schumann to Barber and Gershwin.