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Classical highlights for the week ahead: 27 November - 4 December

<span>Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian</span>
Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Australian Chamber Orchestra

The Barbican continues its association with Richard Tognetti and his outstanding band with a three-day digital residency. It’s streaming three of the ACO’s recent projects – there’s a programme mixing works by Bryce Dessner, Sufjan Stevens and Jonny Greenwood with Szymanowski, Lutosławski and Penderecki, and one featuring the didgeridoo player William Barton, as well as a screening from 2017 of the film Mountain, narrated by Willem Dafoe, with the orchestra playing the soundtrack live.
1-3 December, free, and on demand for a month (1 and 2 December concerts);or and for until 5 Dec (3 December concert

Messiah

The Messiah season begins here, with Lawrence Cummings conducting the London Handel Orchestra and soloists, with the choruses prepared and pre-recorded by six choirs and integrated digitally into the performance
3 December, live-streamed free from St George’s, Hanover Square, London, and then available on demand

Hallé Orchestra

Mark Elder conducts the first of the Hallé’s rather belated series of online concerts. There’s a new fanfare from Huw Watkins to begin; that’s followed by a suite from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, and Brahms’s First Symphony.
3 December, streamed on demand (£) from Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, and available on demand until March.

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

A strings-only pre-recorded programme: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conducts John Ireland’s Downland Suite and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and the newly installed leader of the CBSO, Eugene Tzikindelean, directs Bartók’s Divertimento.
3 December, streamed on demand (£), available until 1 January

The Creatures of Prometheus

Beethoven’s only ballet gets a rare performance by the Philharmonia and its principal conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Stephen Fry narrates a new version of the scenario by Gerard McBurney, accompanied by Hillary Leben’s animations.
4 December, streamed free and then available on demand