Aurora Orchestra has announced a new digital series, Aurora Play, which presents highlights from the ensemble’s performance archive alongside newly created interactive content.

The series kicks off on Sunday May 10 at 4pm with a broadcast of its Orchestral Theatre staging of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, performed to great acclaim at last year’s BBC Proms. Future concerts, all of which are to be broadcast on YouTube Premiere before being made available through the Aurora’s website and YouTube channel, include further Proms performances from 2017 and 2015 (of Beethoven’s Eroica and Pastoral symphonies respectively, both played from memory), and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 22 with Angela Hewitt from a performance last year at Kings Place, where Aurora is Resident Orchestra.

None of the performances have been seen since their original online or television broadcasts, and this time they’re being supplemented with introductions by conductor Nicholas Collon and other special guests. In addition, the orchestra’s Workshop Leader-in-Residence Jessie Maryon Davies has created an accompanying series of interactive films to encourage audience participation and interaction. Said Collon: ‘It’s exciting that so many of these vivid collaborations from our past can now be shown again on screen to a wider audience. We hope that … people of all ages and backgrounds will … learn more about the music we play, the people and players behind the performances and the background to these extraordinary pieces.’

It’s fitting that the first broadcast should be its performance of Symphonie fantastique, a bespoke production interweaving live orchestra performance with theatrical design, lighting, movement, costumes and Berlioz’s own words spoken by Horrible Histories actor Mathew Baynton. Performing without scores, the orchestra offers audiences a new way to experience this imaginative and theatrical work – this time from their own homes.

To see Aurora Play’s full schedule, visit auroraorchestra.com