On Thursday 11 December, film composer Alexandre Desplat joins the LSO to conduct us through a selection of some of his most iconic scores, including The King's Speech, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Grand Budapest Hotel and more.

As part of our Ones to Watch series of concerts we’re putting the spotlight on seven of the brightest emerging conducting talents in the world with a series of interviews.

We’ll be finding out what makes our up-and-coming conductors tick, what they think makes a great conductor great, what a baton is for and crucially… who they would invite to a fantasy dinner party!

This weekend sees the biennial Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition, at the end of which we will find the next Assistant Conductor of the LSO.

The Competition
The competition, which has been running every two years since 1990, kicks off on Saturday 6 December at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In Rounds 1 (Saturday) & 2 (Sunday) 20 competitors (selected from 225 applicants) will be whittled down to ten, and then to just three finalists.

Yasmin Hemmings is the LSO's Discovery and LSO Live Trainee, and has been working at the LSO for just a few weeks. Create an Opera in a Day was one of her first projects to be involved in, and she gives us an account of the day.

On Saturday 1 November, families arrived at LSO St Luke’s for the LSO Discovery Family Day, LSO in Wartime: Create an Opera in a Day. The Family Day was part of a weekend of events organised by the LSO which commemorated the centenary of World War I. Formed in 1904, the LSO had just celebrated its tenth anniversary when war broke out and 41 musicians who had played with the LSO, or were to play with them in the future, served in the war.