ROYAL Northern Sinfonia share the stage with BRIT Award winner Natalie Clein at Sage Gateshead on Friday.

Conducted by Lithuanian Giedrė Šlekytė, the orchestra will perform Wagner’s musical love letter Siegfried Idyll alongside Saint-Saëns’ passionate Cello Concerto No1, featuring Natalie Clein, and Louise Farrenc’s fiery Symphony No 3.

Royal Northern Sinfonia’s 2019/20 Season prominently features female composers and conductors, and this concert not only features a woman conductor, but also two female composers living 200 years apart.

Few audiences will be familiar with the work of Louise Farrenc, as we are only just starting to hear her music regularly on the concert platform, but the highly regarded contemporary of Berlioz and Schumann was described as ‘the female Beethoven’.

Tansy Davies’ brand-new piece, Plumes, completing the programme, was written for RNS as part of their 60th Anniversary encores, celebrating the chamber orchestra with relevant, contemporary repertoire.

Classic FM favourite, cellist Natalie Clein won the Classical BRIT Award for Young British Performer in 2005, and internationally- renowned conductor Giedrė Šlekytė has previously worked with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, St Christopher Chamber Orchestra in Lithuania, and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.

Tickets start from £14 and are available at sagegateshead.com or the Box Office on 0191 443 4661 or in person.