Thursday 1 January, 7.30pm, St Albans Cathedral. Tickets.
Celebrate the passing of the old to the new in the mighty nave of St Albans Cathedral. This year we celebrate America and its boundlessly rich musical traditions. Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man is matched by Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No.1, a blisteringly brilliant and joyous paean to brass, horns and percussion; you’ll probably never have heard a bravura timpani solo like this one. There’s swing and big tunes a-plenty in the hits of Gershwin and Rodgers & Hammerstein; and then we have the rarified waltz world of Vienna in the hands of that master of stage and screen, Korngold, in his Straussiana. After the centrepiece of Bernstein’s West Side Story Symphonic Dances, we round off with two Sousa Marches before stepping out confidently into the night and 2026.