The Jupiter Orchestra at Barts Great Hall — 8 October 2026.

Photograph: Macaulay Nicholson

Following their debut in the Gasholders Building at King's Cross, The Jupiter Orchestra returned for its second concert, this time inside Barts Great Hall at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Smithfield, one of London's oldest and most storied buildings.

The Jupiter Orchestra’s second concert at Barts Great Hall on 8 October 2026 brought Mozart, Brahms and Haydn into a room built for gathering. Christopher Clark conducted, with Bjørg Pas as violin soloist and Samuel Staples leading the orchestra. The programme responded to the hall’s proportions and history, bringing established professionals and emerging musicians together before a sold-out audience.

Guests ascended the Hogarth Stair, passing the immense painted scenes before entering the newly restored hall. Eleanor Medcalf performed on the harp as they arrived. With generations of benefactors’ names lining the walls, the room carried the history of a community brought together to support St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro opened the concert. Its theatrical anticipation extended the sense of arrival: a passage through grand spaces, then a story beginning to unfold. Professor Charles Knight OBE spoke after the overture.

Bjørg Pas then joined the orchestra for Brahms’s Violin Concerto. Clark’s choice began with a question about the room: how would the sound of a solo violin, supported by an orchestra, inhabit its rectangular proportions? The concerto’s breadth and intimate exchanges offered different ways to hear that relationship.

After the interval, Clark spoke about founding Jupiter to bring artists at different stages of their careers together, and to bring people from across London together through music. Guests that evening had also travelled from Canada, Norway and New Zealand.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, ‘London’, concluded the programme. The North Wing was completed in 1732, the year of Haydn’s birth; its Georgian architecture belonged to the world of rooms in which his London reputation flourished. All three works shared D major as their home key. Their theatrical energy, lyrical breadth and rhythmic wit gave Jupiter’s second gathering a common musical foundation.

Programme

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Overture to The Marriage of Figaro

Johannes Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 (Bjørg Pas, violin)

Joseph Haydn Symphony No. 104 in D major 'London'

Performers

Bjørg Pas violin (Royal Academy of Music)

Christopher Clark conductor

The Jupiter Orchestra