Masaaki Suzuki [Marco Borggreve]

YOU can’t hurry Wagner: it takes time to seep into your soul and work its magic. And something you especially can’t hurry is Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of the Ring Cycle in which an epic story that follows the history of the world from start to finish plays out. Across six hours.
In fact you’ll need slightly more than six hours if you want to hear Götterdämmerung done in concert this coming Saturday, April 27, which is why the start time at the Royal Festival Hall is mid-afternoon. But it promises to be time well spent, marking the end of a triumphant (if extended) progress through the Ring that conductor Vladimir Jurowsky and the London Philharmonic began back in 2018.

It was meant to reach Götterdämmerung in 2021, but Covid intervened. And as it takes a while to get projects like this off the ground again once they’ve crash-landed, you can truly call Saturday’s performance a long-awaited event. The cast is impressive, including Brindley Sherratt as the evil Hagen (feel free to boo, but not until the curtain). Settle down, take sandwiches, and don’t look at your watch. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Almost rivalling Götterdämmerung in the marathon stakes and on the same day, April 27, there’s an afternoon and evening of piano music by Balakirev at Wigmore Hall, played by Nicholas Walker. Balakirev was one of the 19th century Russian composers known as the Mighty Handful. And though his works aren’t so often performed these days in the West, they’re famous for one thing: a piece called Islamey that’s often (and fairly) described as the most difficult in all keyboard repertory. Needless to say, it features here. And the other works packaged around it will be a voyage of discovery. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Saturday, April 27 is a spoilt-for-choice day, because another draw is the Monteverdi Vespers at St John’s Smith Square, done by the choir of Clare College, Cambridge under the conductor I recently noted in this column as on a roll, Graham Ross. It features period instruments. And if Smith Square isn’t quite so spectacular as the space for which this music was written, St Mark’s Venice, close your eyes and imagine. sjss.org.uk

Talking of Monteverdi, there’s more of him on April 29 when vocal group I Fagiolini (it means The Little Beans: don’t ask why) sing some of his madrigals at Wigmore Hall. A lunchtime concert. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Masaaki Suzuki is a legendary figure in the choral world, famous for recordings of Bach with his own Bach Collegium Japan. But he does other things besides. And on April 28, the eve of his 70th birthday, he celebrates at the Royal Festival Hall by conducting the Philharmonia in music by Beethoven, Schumann and Dvorak. southbankcentre.co.uk

• Finally, two more thing to make April 27 a day of hard decisions. Highgate Choral Society sing music by Karl Jenkins at St Michael’s Highgate: hcschoir.com

And a concert in Kings Place’s Scotland Unwrapped series traces the historic migration of Celtic songs to the USA, where they got absorbed into the folk tradition there. Featuring the Aurora Orchestra with American composer/conductor Nico Mulhy and folk singers Robyn Stapleton and Sam Amidon, it sounds interesting. kingsplace.co.uk