Shimmering beauty for our troubled world

NATIONAL YOUTH ORCHESTRA ROYAL CONCERT HALL

- By WILLIAM RUFF

Cellist Inbal Segev with the National Youth Orchestra at the Royal Concert Hall

(TOM MORLEY)

IT has not been a good start to 2026 on the world stage.

However, the spectacle of the National Youth Orchestra's 160 astonishingly talented teenage musicians concentrated on to the Royal Concert Hall stage was one to gladden the heart and inject some much-needed confidence in the future.

They've called this year’s winter programme “Shimmer”, a great name for the four pieces they had already played in London and Warwick before bringing them to Nottingham. It suggests light but the word does much more than that. It conjures up light.