2026 Proms season showcase - Andrew Hamilton and the Kleio Quartet

Georgia Mann introduces specially recorded performances from some of Radio 3's current New Generation Artists. Andrew Hamilton joins the Kleio Quartet at this year's Norfolk and Norwich Festival in Samuel Barber's hauntingly beautiful setting of Matthew Arnold's meditative poem on the themes of human isolation and a retreating "sea of faith". Also today, the cellist Sterling Elliott plays an arrangement of one of the Meditations from Leonard Bernstein's Mass, the Ukrainian clarinettist Oleg Shebeta-Dragan plays a beautiful Romance from his homeland, and Emma Rawicz presents her Imagined Idyll, a piece which, she says, 'always evokes a sense of nostalgia for me, and a feeling of unattainable completeness.'

Barber: Dover Beach
Andrew Hamilton (baritone), Kleio Quartet

Bernstein: Meditation from Mass
Sterling Elliott (cello), Joseph Havlat (piano)

Emma Rawicz: Imagined Idyll
Emma Rawicz (tenor sax) with Rasmus Sørensen (piano), David Preston (electric guitar),Freddie Jensen (bass) and Marc Michel (drums)

Lyudmyla Shukaylo: Romance
Oleg Shebeta-Dragan (clarinet), Dominic Degavino (piano)

For over a quarter of a century, Radio 3’s prestigious talent scheme has provided an invaluable springboard for many of today’s leading international soloists and chamber music ensembles. Indeed, a list of the former alumni reads like a Who’s Who of the international music scene with names like Lisa Batiashvili, Igor Levit, Sean Shibe, Alison Balsom, Anastasia Kobekina and the Belcea Quartet.