Heloise Werner, Colin Alexander, Julian Azkoul, Max Baillie, Kit Downes, Ruth Gibson & Marianne Schofield

Héloïse Werner’s first album, Phrases, was received ecstatically. For her second, she wanted to create a programme with a cohesive narrative arc – a journey, but one that the listener can take in their own time and their own way. For it, she has assembled a group of musicians who both share in her concept but also bring to the project their own varied musical personalities to complement Héloïse’s own distinctive voice.

Rightly described by Héloïse as ‘amazing people’, her collaborators – Colin Alexander, Julian Azkoul, Max Baillie, Kit Downes, Ruth Gibson and Marianne Schofield – stitch their individual contributions into close-ups in colours just as vibrant as Héloïse’s own.

BBC Singers, Hallé Choirs, BBC Philharmonic

The imagined sounds of mass protest run through composer Emily Howard’s and poet Michael Symmons Roberts’s The Anvil, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Manchester International Festival to mark the bicentenary of the 1819 Peterloo massacre, in which crowds protesting for universal suffrage in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, were brutally crushed. Howard's work adds the immense forces of four choirs to a stellar line up of soloists – each given music tailored to its particular capabilities, from professional to amateur – and the BBC Philharmonic to ask: what future was being forged in the tragic events that took place that day?