Classical highlights: concerts and opera to watch in March

From witches to Weber, and Andriessen to Zimmermann – our pick of this month’s streamed music

• NB events are liable to be cancelled at short notice. Please check websites for latest details

Hansel and Gretel

Scottish Opera’s filmed staging of Humperdinck’s masterpiece, directed by Daisy Evans, with David Parry conducting a reduced version of the score by Derek Clark. Kitty Whately and Rhian Lois are the errant children; Nadine Benjamin is their mother and the witch, and Charlie Drummond the Sandman and the Dew Fairy.
Available on demand.

All About Bach festival

The two-month-long series of weekly concerts devoted to Bach, involving eight soloists, ends on 5 March with a recital by violinist Charlie Siem. But all the previous programmes remain available on demand, including performances by cellist Boris Andrianov, guitarist Dimitri Illarionov and pianist Oliver Poole.
Available on demand.

Wintermezzo

All four weeks of concerts in last month’s Bergen Philharmonic streaming festival remain available. Principal conductor Edward Gardner conducts most of the programmes, with pianist Víkingur Ólafsson as artist in residence; there are performances of Berio’s Rendering, Vasks’ Viola Concerto, and Steen-Andersen’s Piano Concerto, as well as Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh, Brahms’s Fourth, and Sibelius’s Third and Seventh Symphonies.
All concerts available in the orchestra’s archive.

Kyle Ketelsen (Kaspar) and Pavel Černoch (Max) in Bayerische Staatsoper’s new production of Weber’s Der Freischutz
Event … Kyle Ketelsen and Pavel Černoch in the Bavarian State Opera’s new production of Der Freischütz. Photograph: Wilfried Hösl

Der Freischütz

New opera productions are few and far between across Europe at the moment, but the Bavarian State Opera went ahead with its staging of Weber’s masterpiece as an online-only event. The production, which updates the action to the underworld of today, is directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, with Pavel Černoch as Max and Golda Schultz as Agathe; Anna Prohaska is Ännchen and Kyle Ketelsen is Kaspar.
Available free on demand until 17 March.

Wigmore Hall

Ian Bostridge performing last year.
Ian Bostridge performing last year. Photograph: Mark Allan

March highlights from the Wigmore’s packed schedule of recitals include Gweneth Ann Rand singing Barber, Messiaen and Wagner (2 March), Apartment House playing Christian Wolff, Walter Zimmermann and John Cage (8 March), Claire Booth and Christopher Glynn performing Poulenc’s monodrama La Voix Humaine (10 March), a 50th-birthday concert for pianist Steven Osborne (12 March), the Nash Ensemble playing Bruch and Brahms (22 March), and Ian Bostridge singing Debussy, Fauré and Schubert (29 March).
All concerts streamed live and available for 30 days.

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

The Bournemouth SO resumes its weekly series of livestreamed orchestral concerts with a programme of Schubert, Liadov and Shostakovich, conducted by Marta Gardolińska. Later in the month there’s Brahms’s Second Symphony from David Hill, and Kirill Karabits conducts works by Penderecki and Haydn.
Livestreamed (£) from the Lighthouse, Poole, on 3, 10, 17 and 24 March, and each available on demand for 30 days.

London Symphony Orchestra

So far two filmed concerts have been confirmed for March in the LSO’s online spring season. There’s an Austro-Hungarian programme of Bartók’s Dance Suite, Ligeti’s Romanian Concerto and Haydn’s final symphony No 104 in D, the “London”, under John Eliot Gardiner on 4 March, and Simon Rattle conducts an all-Stravinsky programme including the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the ballet score Orpheus.
4 March concert streamed free until 11 March, and afterwards available on demand (£); 7 March programme on the LSO’s YouTube channel.

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

The six concerts in the SCO’s spring season were filmed at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, and the Perth Concert Hall. Programmes range from piano quartets by Mozart and Fauré to percussion works by Dani Howard, Arvo Pärt, Louis Andriessen and Steve Reich; there are string octets by Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and wind music by Bacewicz and Kaprálová.
Streamed on the SCO’s YouTube and Facebook channels on 4, 11, 18 and 25 March; each available on demand for 30 days.

Sir Simon Rattle
Bavaria-bound … Sir Simon Rattle. Photograph: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images

Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle makes his first appearances with the BRSO since he was announced as its next chief conductor. On 6 March he conducts a two-part concert, the first part pairs the world premiere of Ondřej Adámek’s Where Are You, with Magdalena Kožená as the soloist, with Messiaen’s monumental Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum, and the second prefaces Georg Friedrich Haas’s In Vain with Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary. In Rattle’s second concert Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments is flanked by Brahms and Haydn.
Streamed live from Munich, 6 and 12 March, and available on demand afterwards.

Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Bach, MacMillan and Brahms launch the ASMF’s spring season: Bach’s sixth Brandenburg Concerto and Brahms’s Serenade No 2 frame James MacMillan’s wind quintet Untold. Further concerts are planned from April to August.
Streamed from 11 March, then available on demand (£) until 10 April.

Contributor

Andrew Clements

The GuardianTramp

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