The Grand Tour: a choral journey around Europe

Inspired by the traditional 'grand tour' made by young British aristocrats from the seventeenth century onwards, Londinium embarks on an intrepid journey around some of Europe's foremost musical centres. Our route follows a typical grand tourist's itinerary: after leaving London for Paris, we make a perilous Alpine crossing to explore the treasures of Italy, before returning home by way of Vienna. On our travels we encounter a dazzling array of repertoire - everything from the polyphony of Renaissance Rome to the polychoral splendour of Venice, the Neapolitan Baroque, echoes of Wagner's Tristan, the seductive soundworld of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the sophistication of Debussy, and the music of our own time. Particular highlights include Clytus Gottwald's sumptuous transcriptions of Wagner and Mahler, Judith Bingham's bewitching Gleams of a remoter world, the UK première of Matthew Recio's How to survive Vesuvius, and - marking the quincentenary of the death of its protagonist - Eric Whitacre's hugely entertaining Leonardo Dreams of his flying machine.