Classical music highlights at this year's Brighton Festival

A spokesman said: “Brighton Festival 2025’s classical programme sees this year’s guest director, the Grammy-nominated musician and composer Anoushka Shankar, perform music by her father Ravi Shankar alongside Britten Sinfonia and Indian classical musicians, while Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play a brand-new piece by Rachel Portman, Oscar-winning composer of scores such as Emma and Chocolat.

“A concert from London Symphony Orchestra is led by acclaimed Finnish conductor Susanna Mälkki and William Christie presents artists from Les Arts Florissants, his academy for young Baroque singers. Celebrated cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason plays a wide-ranging programme with Castalian String Quartet and violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason works with Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra.

“For the first time since the 2017 BBC Proms and only the second time ever in the UK, in a Brighton Festival exclusive on Friday, May 9 Anoushka Shankar will perform in full Passages, her father Ravi Shankar’s album created in collaboration with American composer Philip Glass. The album, a sharing of different musical vocabularies, combines Glass’s minimalist style with Shankar’s expressive brand of Indian classical music, with both writing arrangements based on themes suggested by the other. This collaborative spirit will be recreated live on stage by Anoushka Shankar, Britten Sinfonia and a specially curated ensemble of Indian classical musicians.

“Rachel Portman, the first female composer to win an Academy Award, for the 1996 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, has written a new concerto for violin, narrator and orchestra that considers the Tipping Points we may have reached in the climate crisis. The UK premiere will be performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Francesca Dego on Thursday, May 22, as the centre piece of a nature-themed programme conducted by Grammy Award-winning Ludovic Morlot. This concert will also include Sibelius’s orchestral hymn to the Finnish forests, Tapiola Op 112 and the monumental Vespers of the Blessed Earth from American composer and environmental activist John Luther Adams with Brighton Festival Chorus.

“On Saturday, May 17, London Symphony Orchestra is accompanied by acclaimed violinist Leila Josefowicz and led by one of today’s most versatile conductors, Susanna Mälkki in a series of orchestral showpieces including Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. The programme is prefaced by the high-energy A Short Piece for a Large Orchestra, by pioneering mid-20th century Black-American composer Julia Perry.

“On Sunday, May 18, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and the prizewinning Castalian String Quartet present a programme including a contemporary response to Bach’s iconic Solo Cello Suites by British composer Natalie Klouda that blends Baroque and Indian classical styles; Schubert’s final chamber work, Quintet in C and Thomas Adés’ “magically allusive” (The Guardian) Arcadiana.

“Violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason plays with Create Music’s Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra on Monday, May 12. An opportunity for these young classical musicians to be inspired by an accomplished young professional through a performance of accessible music, the programme includes Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite and Mussorgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain (featured in Disney film Fantasia). Also to feature is early 20th century composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose work received two world premieres in the very same Brighton Dome Concert Hall that this concert takes place.”

Brighton Festival 2025 guest director Anoushka Shankar said: “I’m thrilled to be welcoming an incredible range of performers from across the spectrum of classical music to Brighton Festival 2025. This year’s Festival explores art’s power to challenge and uplift and there are so many unique perspectives and collaborations in the classical programme that will do exactly that. I’m also hugely excited to share the music of my father, Ravi Shankar, with Brighton Festival audiences”.

Brighton Festival 2025 runs from May 3-26 offering a programme inspired by the idea of a new dawn.