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This year’s focus on William Walton wouldn’t be complete without his witty, genre-bending ‘entertainment’ ¹ó²¹Ã§²¹»å±ð. Shostakovich is also seen here at his most whimsical. Arranged from the composer’s earlier film scores, the Four Waltzes range from the good-humoured ‘Spring Waltz’, to the faux naïf ‘Waltz-Scherzo’ and the charmingly kitsch ‘Barrel Organ Waltz’.

Sir Harrison Birtwistle turns 80 this summer. The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group celebrates with a performance of three of the composer’s classic early works. Verses for Ensembles, Dinah and Nick’s Love Song and Meridian all explore intriguing and unfamiliar textures, but never neglect the ever-unfolding melody that is the core of all Birtwistle’s music.

The young British pianist performs a programme with a dance theme pulsing through it. Chopin’s stately Ballade No. 1 gives way to the dizzying virtuosity of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, before the waltz returns, transfigured, in Liszt’s Waltz from ‘Faust’. Mompou’s Paisajes transports us to Barcelona, and Grosvenor also premieres a new work by Judith Weir.

Celebrating his 80th birthday this year, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of the greats of contemporary British music. A programme chosen by Davies himself ranges from the sleek chamber textures of A Mirror of Whitening Light to the music-drama of Revelation and Fall. London Sinfonietta Principal Cellist Timothy Gill is the soloist in Linguae ignis’s writhing plainchant melodies.

Pianist Louis Schwizgebel and the dynamic Royal String Quartet are the key players in a concert that culminates in Richard Strauss's richly nostalgic Metamorphosen, heard in an intimate arrangement for string septet. Alongside it are Mahler's contemplative Piano Quartet movement and Mozart's elegantly poised Piano Sonata in D major, K311.