Sir Malcolm Arnold’s 5th symphony – the Barbican April 11

SERIOUS composers sometimes get hijacked by popular fame. And a case in point is Malcolm Arnold whose 1950s film scores (Bridge on the River Kwai etc) made him a household name, and whose light music still gets plundered for signature tunes to TV programmes.

But mention his symphonies and you draw blank looks, because they’re not often played. And when they are, their darkness tends to shock – in contrast to so much of Arnold’s better-known scores that bounce along with robust cheerfulness.

In truth, Arnold was a dark character, beset by demons and spending long periods of his life in psychiatric institutions – including a secure ward in Hampstead’s Royal Free Hospital, where he was periodically sectioned.

You get a sense of that tragedy in his 5th Symphony, a tempestuous masterpiece from the early 60s that gets a rare performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, April 11. It’s paired with a piano concerto by Doreen Carwithen who also wrote 1950s film scores but made the mistake of marrying another composer, William Alwyn, whose music eclipsed hers. Time for some reappraisal. barbican.org.uk

• This is in fact a good week for neglected English piano concertos, because the one by Arthur Bliss gets a rare outing, April 16, from the RPO at Cadogan Hall. It’s a piece in which I take special interest in that it was written, in 1938, in a house across the way from where I live in NW3. And there’s a plaque to prove it.

This performance has Peter Donohoe as soloist. Martyn Brabbins conducts. And it shares the bill with Elgar’s Enigma Variations: nothing to do with wartime code-breaking but a veiled portrait of the composer’s friends, including a mysterious woman who was clearly close to him but not his wife. cadoganhall.com

• By and large, opera singers sing opera and jazz singers jazz. But occasionally barriers dissolve – as they will at the wonderfully intimate Salon Music series that runs in Hampstead Lane, Highgate, when soprano Dani Sicari crosses all boundaries with guitarist James Girling.
Sicari appears with companies like Opera Holland Park singing Donizetti or Mozart with coloratura embellishment. But she’s also drawn to the more laid-back world of 1930s New Orleans. And she promises both at this Highgate event, April 15 – where the food offering (there’s always food) will be themed to the repertoire. Expect jambalaya. salonmusic.co.uk

• It’s not often these days that the Roundhouse, Camden Town, goes classical; but on April 15 it hosts the National Youth Orchestra on their spring tour. And given the NYO’s reputation for big shows, they’ll probably shake the building to its foundations with this pulsating programme of Stravinsky, Bernstein and a percussion concerto by Jennifer Higdon (a composer whose music I find mesmerising: if you haven’t heard it, take this as an opportunity). Free tickets for under-20s. roundhouse.org.uk

• Among the most creatively ambitious groups on the classical circuit, the London Choral Sinfonia are on form at Smith Square, April 15, with an environmentally attuned programme that includes music by contemporary superstars Caroline Shaw and Eric Whitacre. But there’s also an epic new work by young composer Edward Picton-Turberville called Out of Eden. An ear-catcher I’m told. sinfoniasmithsquare.org.uk