Britten Sinfonia & James MacMillan

Britten Sinfonia make their Schwarzman Centre debut on Wednesday 20 January 2027, with conductor and composer Sir James MacMillan leading the chamber orchestra. It's their first time playing the Sohmen Concert Hall, and they're bringing a programme that puts MacMillan's own work at the centre.

That's Euphonium Concerto, Where the Lugas meets the Glaisnock, a piece MacMillan wrote himself, so he'll be conducting his own music on the night. Alongside it, the orchestra will play music by Grażyna Bacewicz, the Polish composer and violinist. The third part of the evening is an orchestral reimagining of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131 — a work originally written for four string players, here expanded for the full chamber orchestra. David Childs will also be conducting during the concert.

The whole thing sits within Beethoven Is Everywhere, a series running from January to April 2027 at the Schwarzman Centre. It marks the 200th anniversary of Beethoven's death by looking at his legacy, pairing arrangements of his work with new compositions and historically informed performances from ensembles like The London Haydn Quartet and the Rautio Piano Trio, with contributions from Oxford University researchers. This concert fits that pattern: a Beethoven classic reimagined and set alongside contemporary music.

The venue itself is the Sohmen Concert Hall, inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on Woodstock Road in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. The Centre opened to the public in April 2026 and houses seven of the university's humanities faculties, the Bodleian Humanities Library, and a range of performance, screening and exhibition spaces. The concert starts at 19:00.