When the leading ballet conductor Philip Ellis was in Sydney recently he had a little free time to practise his skills as an artist and produced this lovely picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
With imminent trips to Hong Kong, where he conducts The Merry Widow for Hong Kong Ballet, and Melbourne to conduct La Sylphide for Australian Ballet, we hope that there will be time for Philip to paint some more local scenes, as we wouldn’t mind hanging one on the office wall!

Leaving Hollywood and Broadway behind (in spite of repeats of the 2011 and 2012 Proms on Christmas television), John Wilson returned to his other major love, English music, in an outstanding début last week with the National Youth Orchestra at Leeds Town Hall (recorded by Radio 3) and the Barbican. "There is a barrage of Britten to come in this centenary year though surely none of it will be better played than the NYO’s pellucid and bracing account of Four Sea Interludes (The Guardian), where "Wilson’s predilection for juicy string vibrato lent Britten’s aching violin lines delicious colour”. In Holst’s The Planets "the music’s progression from aggressive exuberance to otherworldly abstraction was beautifully plotted, and the extended, rapt silence as Neptune ebbed away was exquisite, the entire vast audience collectively holding its breath..” (theartsdesk.com). "Under Wilson’s dynamic direction the players delivered a performance that was not just cinematic but high-definition and 3D to boot” (London Evening Standard). On 20 January John Wilson returns to the Philharmonia and the Royal Festival Hall with a programme of Elgar, Walton, Delius and Vaughan Williams with Leon McCawley as soloist in the John Ireland Piano Concerto.

Emma Johnson goes into the studio next month to mark 50 years since the death of Hindemith with a new recording of his Clarinet Sonata from 1939. Entitled Brave New World, the disc features composers who solved the problem of how to write music rooted in the classics while still relevant to the modern world but who were affected by the Second World War. They include Lutoslawski, Messiaen and Prokofiev. The pianist is Emma's long-time collaborator John Lenehan.

And while on the subject of recordings, we are pleased to announce that Alessandro Taverna is to make his debut on the SOMM label later this year with a selection of major piano works by the Ukrainian composer Nikolai Kapustin, whose music is steeped in both the traditions of classical virtuoso pianism and improvisational jazz.