- Hans Zender’s reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise with Allan Clayton – released on Signum Classics on 16 January
- Aurora puts the audience inside the orchestra to experience Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony up close
Aurora’s ground-breaking production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring returns for two performances
Nicholas Collon conducts Aurora Orchestra in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring by Heart
Image Credit Maarit Kytöharju/Helsinki Festival
Aurora is one of the world’s most creative ensembles, dedicated to pushing the boundaries of what is expected of an orchestra, while never compromising on the quality of the music. The orchestra works at the cutting edge of adventurous concert presentation, and is committed to making classical music accessible to all while inspiring the next generation of classical musicians.
Aurora’s 2025/6 Winter/Spring season presents a varied and imaginative programme that showcases bold, risk-taking concert formats, cross-arts collaboration, far-reaching UK and international tours and innovative educational work.
Nicholas Collon, Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of Aurora Orchestra, says: “I’m so thrilled that this Spring we are revisiting two of the most rewarding works that Aurora has performed from memory; Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony and Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring.’ The latter was a watershed moment for Aurora when we first played it in 2023, breaking new territory for us both with the first-half exploration and with the memorised performance. A highlight of last season was being able to record Schubert’s Winterreise with Allan Clayton – the recording came on the back a tour of staged performances, and we were all immersed in and carried away by both the power of Schubert’s music in Zender’s unique arrangement, but also Allan’s sensational interpretation, I believe showing his status as one of the finest tenors in the world today.”
Jane Mitchell, Creative Director of Aurora Orchestra, says: “This season Aurora is going to be sharing orchestral music in such a huge variety of ways, and we are so excited by this challenge. Ranging from the return of our large-scale theatrical exploration of The Rite of Spring to inviting audiences to step inside and become part of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony and presenting a new adventure in the mountains with Mahler for both early years and late-night audiences; we hope that this season really does have something for everyone!”
New album – Schubert’s Winterreise – released on Signum Classics on 16 January 2026
Announced today, Aurora will release Schubert’s Winterreise on Signum Classics on 16 January 2026. Hans Zender’s reimagining of Winterreise transforms a familiar piano cycle into a vivid orchestral journey, blending intimacy and intensity. Tenor Allan Clayton and conductor Nicholas Collon lead Aurora through a landscape of fractured memories, where folk-infused simplicity collides with Mahlerian grandeur and Berg-like expressionism. Zender preserves Schubert’s vocal line but enriches the sound world with guitar, accordion, melodicas, and striking orchestral effects that evoke storms, frozen tears, and fleeting dreams. Recorded in the studio following a live tour, this interpretation magnifies the cycle’s raw truth about love, loss, and despair, offering audiences a deeply modern, immersive encounter with one of classical music’s most haunting masterpieces.
Southbank Centre
As Resident Orchestra at Southbank Centre since 2022, Aurora presents two major projects this season which bring the audience closer than ever to classical music.
- Three years after the orchestra’s first ‘hair-raisingly exciting’ (Evening Standard) memorised, dramatised and musical exploration of Stravinsky’s riotous work, Aurora revives its award-winning production of The Rite of Spring for a one-off London performance (Thursday 16 April), followed by a tour of Germany and Switzerland. In its signature Orchestral Theatre style, Aurora invites listeners under the skin of the iconic score through a specially-created theatrical introduction, before a performance of the whole score entirely from memory, without sheet music, stands or chairs.
- Aurora flips the concert hall on its head in Mozart’s Jupiter by Heart (Sunday 28 June) – inviting the audience to step inside the orchestra for a unique, close-up experience of Mozart’s final symphony in an intimate, memorised performance. The orchestra will be spread out across the Royal Festival Hall stage with some of the audience seated inside, with additional seating around the edge of the stage and in the choir stalls. The concert will be presented by Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon, with musical extracts from the symphony highlighted ahead of each movement. There will be a Family Edit edition at 2pm, for children aged 6+.
Snape Maltings weekend
Tracing its early days back to Snape Maltings, Aurora marked its 20th anniversary last May with a celebratory birthday weekend of programming at the site. Next April, the orchestra returns again, presenting two trailblazing projects. Ahead of its performance at the Southbank Centre, Aurora brings back its ground-breaking 2023 Orchestral Theatre production of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Saturday 11 April), bringing the critically-acclaimed production to audiences in Suffolk for the first time.
Aurora opens the weekend in signature collaborative style, joining forces with the BBC Singers, Britten Pears Chamber Choir and pianist Nicholas McCarthy for a programme ablaze with colour, rhythm and life, including two of Ravel’s most loved works: his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand and Boléro alongside Faure’s Requiem and John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. (Friday 10 April).
Kings Place concerts
Entering its thirteenth year as Resident Ensemble at Kings Place, Aurora contributes a trio of performances as part of the venue’s year-long Memory Unwrapped series, which aims to uncover how memory and music can spark transformation and inspire change.
- Father and daughter duo – composer-conductor Brett Dean and Mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean – present a deep-rooted collaboration rooted in a lifetime of shared musical moments – from the tender nostalgia of Copland’s Simple Gifts, to the shimmering energy of John Adams’ Shaker Loops, each piece in the programme is a different act of memory (Saturday 17 January).
- The Principal Wind Players of Aurora bring together four masterpieces of chamber music, each alive with the memory of a time long past; Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, Poulenc’s Sextet for Piano and Winds, Judith Weir’s Airs from another Planet and Janáček’s Mládí (Thursday 19 March). This concert will also be performed at Barnes Festival, with tickets on sale soon (Wednesday 18 March).
- Aurora’s latest collaboration with the BBC Singers unites three composers – Nico Muhly, Leonard Bernstein and JS Bach – who, centuries apart, each return to ancient psalm texts in their own way. The programme is co-curated and introduced by writer and artist Edmund de Waal, who reflects on the Psalms as vessels of memory, carrying human experience across centuries (Sunday 29 November). This programme will also be presented at Oxford’s Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities (Saturday 28 November).
Misc / Around the UK
- Aurora’s latest memorised series is Mendelssohn’s uplifting Fourth Symphony, which tours to the Wiltshire Music Centre (Friday 21 November), Snape Maltings Concert Hall (Saturday 22 November), Saffron Hall (Sunday 23 November) and Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall (Tuesday 25 November). Programmed alongside Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 performed by Chloë Hanslip and Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony bursts with irrepressible energy.
- Aurora makes its debut at Oxford’s new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities with a joyful programme that journeys from intimate nostalgia to blazing celebration, culminating in a memorised performance of Mozart’s mightyJupiter Symphony. Also on the programme is Jessie Montgomery’s rhythmically-charged Strum, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1, performed by internationally acclaimed pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (Friday 19 June). This programme also tours to Saffron Hall, Essex (Sunday 21 June).
International
Aurora takes its landmark memorisation of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring on tour across Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands in April 2026, including debut performances at Berlin’s Philharmonie (Monday 20 April) and de Doelen, Rotterdam (Saturday 25 April), as well as returning to venues including the Kölner Philharmonie (Tuesday 21 April) and Victoria Hall, Geneva (Thursday 30 April). The work is programmed alongside Ravel’s Boléro, John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, performed by pianist and YouTube sensation Hayato Sumino (20 – 30 April).
Family and educational offer
Aurora’s family offerings aim to open up the world of classical music and bring it alive to audiences of all ages, offering imaginative and accessible introductions to orchestral music, reshape perceptions and inspiring the next generation of musicians and music-lovers.
Aurora’s online learning platform, Aurora Classroom, is now free to all schools. Continuing its commitment to music education, Aurora Classroom helps specialist and non-specialist teachers teach music with confidence, with units that focus on different dimensions of music and storytelling in music. Spring 2025 saw the launch of Stories in Sound, a new unit for KS2 that takes Aurora Orchestra’s performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as a basis for a term’s worth of lessons focusing on creating music in the classroom and grows to include materials for KS3, 4 and 5; as a result, Aurora Classroom now supports music education across the entire 3-18 age range for free.
Aurora’s immersive storytelling concert series, Far, Far Away, continues with Mahler and the Mountain Adventure, featuring new chamber arrangements of the music of Gustav and Alma Mahler alongside an original story from Kate Wakeling, critically-acclaimed poet and Aurora Writer-in-Residence. Aimed at children aged 0-5 and families, audiences are invited to move, sing and join in with the storytelling (Sunday 23 November – Saturday 6 December). The production is also presented as a one-off late-night experience for grown-ups – offering a fun and light-hearted way into classical music for adult audiences (Saturday 6 December). The children’s show will also return to the Southbank Centre’s Imagine Festival on 19 and 20 February 2026 (on sale in October).
To mark its 20th anniversary, Aurora is currently running the Life-Changing Music Campaign, an ambitious match-funding campaign which aims to raise a total of £500,000 throughout the 2025-26 season. The campaign will invest in Aurora’s future: transforming the scale and reach of the orchestra’s work, expanding its trailblazing schools’ programme and safeguarding its existence for future generations. Find out more at https://www.auroraorchestra.com/life-changing-music-campaign/.