About Britten Sinfonia

If you think classical music is dead, go hear the Britten Sinfonia and see a healthy body bursting with vitality. This band seems to have its finger on the pulse without resorting to any trendy gimmicks. The audience is a bigger mix than any to be seen over at the Festival Hall concerts, with plenty of young people and quite a few kids, and as the lights dim and the players come on stage, they're received with all the ecstasy usually reserved for a cult group.
David Nice, writer/broadcaster

One of Europe’s most celebrated and innovative groups, Britten Sinfonia features some of the finest chamber musicians and soloists. The orchestra is widely praised for the quality of its performance and intelligent approach to concert programming which is centred around the development of its players. Uniquely it does not have a principal conductor or artistic director but chooses to work with a range of the finest international guest artists from across the musical spectrum as suited to each particular project.

Recent seasons have included projects with Thomas Adès, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, James MacMillan, Ian Bostridge, Joanna MacGregor, Masaaki Suzuki, Polyphony and the Michael Clark Company. In 2008/09 guest artists include Mark Padmore, director Katie Mitchell, Imogen Cooper, Dhafer Youssef, Alina Ibragimova and Paul Lewis.

Britten Sinfonia performs in many of Europe’s finest concert halls and festivals and is a regular at the BBC Proms and has residencies in Cambridge, Norwich, Birmingham and Krakow with a concert series at London’s Southbank Centre and the Wigmore Hall. The ensemble enjoys a blossoming international profile, a recent highlight being an acclaimed tour of South America, and is frequently heard on disc, BBC Radio 3 and commercial radio. The orchestra has received awards including a Gramophone Award and in 2007 won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Ensemble Award in recognition of its work.

Read our reviews

Date and venue	Title
14-Jun-2013 Royal Opera House: Linbury Studio Theatre	Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest staged at the ROH Linbury Studio
Interviewed at the Barbican Centre last year, Stephen Fry described Gerald Barry’s score for The Importance of Being Earnest (2010) rather unfavourably as “taking a machete to a soufflé”. However, this zany opera based on Oscar Wilde’s classic play of 1895 has already emerged victorious from concert premières in Los Angeles and London. It has had audiences guffawing with abandon at its array of Second Viennese School parodies, plate-smashing at the tea table, and musical mash-ups of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Auld Lang Syne. Read full review...
3-Apr-2013 Wigmore Hall	Britten, Bridge and a co-commission: Britten Sinfonia at Wigmore Hall
The centenary of Britten’s birth has seen a surge in performances of his music both in the concert hall and on the stages of many a noted opera house. Sensationalised biographies, radio and television programmes, and a number of Britten-centred festivals have helped to pique further interest in a composer whose music tends to attract a love-hate relationship with its listeners. Unsurprisingly, Britten Sinfonia is in the midst of a busy year of imaginative concerts and hotly anticipated collaborations. Read full review...
27-Feb-2013 Barbican Centre: Hall	Baltic music and Bach: Alina Ibragimova and Britten Sinfonia at the Barbican
Alina Ibragimova barely glanced up from her score during her Bach concerto with Britten Sinfonia last night, and the result was some of the most intense, beautiful music-making I can recall hearing. With just six members of the orchestra providing her with impeccable support, this was a performance of a sort of off-the-cuff brilliance in which Ibragimova sounded like she was simply playing a favourite piece of hers in private. Every touch, every shift of style or mood, seemed spontaneous, born of an impulsive, powerful love. Read full review...
22-Nov-2012 Wigmore Hall	Britten Sinfonia and Alice Coote celebrate Britten's birthday in style at Wigmore Hall
22 November 2012 would have been Benjamin Britten’s 99th birthday. Wigmore Hall marked the occasion with the first concert in a series of nine events in November and December. However, rather than focusing exclusively on Britten’s music, it built towards the climax that saw Britten’s angst-ridden late masterpiece Phaedra searingly performed. Read full review...

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