This seems to be a weekend for cello-lovers, beginning tomorrow evening at Symphony Hall when Natalie Clein joins the London Chamber Orchestra in Haydn's C major Cello Concerto.
Conductor Christopher Warren-Green's programme opens with Mozart's witty Impresario Overture, but beyond these two works urbane sophistication is exchanged for more rural matters. The evening culminates in Beethoven's quietly joyous (storm apart) Pastoral Symphony, and also includes two delightful miniatures by Delius, On hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and Summer Night on the River (7.30pm).
Mention of Delius prompts early notice of a wonderful book by Lyndon Jenkins, special projects manager at Symphony Hall. While Spring and Summer Sang: Thomas Beecham and the music of Frederick Delius is a lovingly compiled, elegantly written and beautifully presented account of the great conductor's championship of the otherworldly composer, and I plan to give it a more detailed review before too long (Ashgate Publishing, £45.00 ISBN 0 7546 0721 6).
Also tomorrow night another of the country's great cellists is in action in our region, when Julian Lloyd Webber explores Latin American Bossa Nova rhythms at The Artrix in Bromsgrove.
"I discovered bossa nova through the wonderful music of Tom Jobim," says Lloyd Webber.
"His long-breathed melodies are perfect for the lyrical qualities of the cello. It was his song Meditation that convinced me to form a traditional bossa nova band - with the cello taking the role of the vocalist."
And Lloyd Webber's colleagues in the band join him for this latest instalment in what is proving a vibrant Bromsgrove Festival at 7.45pm (01527 876504).
Saturday brings the third in an impressive line-up of British cellists, with Paul Watkins (nowadays equally renowned as a conductor as well as a soloist) partnering the CBSO under Sakari Oramo in Elgar's Cello Concerto.
Ending with Rimsky-Korsakov's brilliantlyscored, melodically lavish Arabian Nights symphonic suite Scheherazade, the evening opens with John Foulds' pastoral miniature April-England, folky and dance-like (7pm).
On Tuesday the CBSO switches attention from England and the mysterious Orient to France and its neighbour Belgium, with a menu as mouthwatering as Belgian chocolate. The Belgian element comes with Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor, preceded by lighter, more pictorial fare in Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice (indelibly linked with Mickey Mouse for anyone who has seen Walt Disney's Fantasia) and Debussy's Whistler-inspired triptych Nocturnes , with the remarkable CBS Youth Chorus vocalising the wordless "Sirenes".
Jun Markl conducts (7.30pm, repeated Wednesday 2.15pm; all Symphony Hall details on 0121 780 3333).
Down Berkley Street across the other side of Broad Street from Brindley Place, the CBSO Centre is the venue on Saturday for the latest concert from Birmingham Symphonic Winds.
"Gershwin & Co" brings music by George himself, Sousa and Leonard Bernstein, and is billed as "an exciting evening of music by George Gershwin and contemporaries" (the contemporary bit is surprisingly true, Sousa and Bernstein extant from opposite ends of Gershwin's life, all three of them on the planet together for well over a decade).
Keith Allen conducts, Simon Purkess is soloist in the famously intricate Bernstein Prelude, Fugue and Riffs (once described by Simon Rattle as "the sexiest piece of music I know"; I also heard a performance under him break down, and having to be restarted).
Jack Gibbons, acknowledged by many as "the finest Gershwin pianist this side of the Atlantic", is soloist in the "I Got Rhythm" Variations (7.30pm, details on 0121 780 3333).
