Our Rising Stars programme invites outstanding up-and-coming performers to The Queen’s Hall stage. They perform alongside their internationally acclaimed mentors, soprano Louise Alder and pianist James Baillieu. The new recruits for 2026 curate and perform the repertoire for the first half of the concert. After the interval they are joined by Louise Alder, following her performance in opera in concert Don Giovanni at the Usher Hall. Alder has been described by The Times as having ‘such a glorious bloom on her soprano voice that you’d think she could simply sing open the gates of heaven’. Together, they perform Johannes Brahms’s full-blooded Neue Liebeslieder (New Love Songs). Composed in 1874 for a mix of solo voices and vocal ensemble with piano, this set of waltzes depicts a series of highly dramatic scenarios – from stormy seas, to thwarted love and failed bewitchments – all in Brahms’s lush, opulent vocal style. Don’t miss this chance to discover classical music’s future luminaries.

Description supplied by the event organiser.