Mr Bloom's Nursery Get Set Grow

On Saturday 17th January 2009 at the world famous Abbey Road studios in London, Elbow performed the entirety of their Mercury Music Prize winning album The Seldom Seen Kid with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Chantage, the winners of Radio 3's Choir Of The Year competition. The band played new and exclusive versions of the songs from the album in order and were joined by Richard Hawley for The Fix. The Seldom Seen Kid is a welcome return from the band, driven by a thunderous riff that reminds listeners of Elbow's love of the heavy as well as the delicate. Produced by keyboard player, Craig Potter, the album is the follow up to 2005's universally acclaimed Leaders Of The Free World. The big themes of love and loss become the central focus of an album that sees Elbow, a band universally recognized for their musical ability and innovation, stretch their sonic template further than ever before.

The two volumes of Bach’s The Well-Temperd Clavier together represent one of Western music’s greatest achievements. Once described as the ‘Old Testament’ of the keyboard repertoire, these two sequences of 24 Preludes and Fugues – one in every key – represent a wealth of musical invention, ingenuity and delight. A supreme technical challenge for any performer, they also offer an astonishing experience for every listener. Eminent Bach specialist Sir András Schiff, whose discography includes Bach’s complete keyboard repertoire, here performs Book I – embarking upon a cycle that he will conclude next year with Book 2.

Distinguished Bach specialist Sir András Schiff returned to the BBC Proms in 2018 to present Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Bach's effortless brilliance and new-found sonorities push harmony and counterpoint further than ever with a combination of ancient and modern styles, church austerity and galant lightness. Schiff has said that no-one combines the sacred and the secular as Bach does, and this is comprehensively demonstrated in Bach's fascinating and challenging sequence. This performance in the Royal Albert Hall was described as a musical meditation for our troubled times by the Independent.