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Was Rufus Wainwright made for the Proms? Quite possibly: he ticks all the boxes needed for the ideal late-night set. He’s a pop artist, yes, but a pop artist whose love of classical music. 

The Iceland Symphony Orchestra give an assured performance in their debut concert at the Proms, most successfully in the new compositions of their compatriots.

An impressive performance of Oedipus Rex under Sakari Oramo, demonstrating that his rapport with his new orchestra has grown rapidly. 

With murky machinations in the low strings and piercing, vivid woodwind solos above, Harrison Birtwistle’s Night’s Black Bird and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major have surprisingly similar openings.

There was a collaborative spirit underlying this performance with the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano, joined for a brilliant Brahms concerto by Janine Jansen. Walton's First Symphony and a Peter Maxwell Davies fanfare also marvelled.

Vladimir Jurowski put in a surprise appearance at the harpsichord at the start of this London Philharmonic Orchestra concert, which saw Leonidas Kavakos join the orchestra for concertos by Bach and Karl Amadeus Hartmann. But it was the Eroica that drew the strongest performance.

You might think you know what a piano looks and sounds like, but these designs will make you think again. Here are five of the most unusual piano designs ever to hit the market.

Apartment House's debut at Wigmore Hall was impeccably programmed, presenting a varied selection of experimental music from the last few decades.

Playing the keys? With your fingers? How passé. Composers have been experimenting with novel piano-playing techniques for over a century now. Here are a few highlights from a hundred years of bizarre things you can get up to with your piano.

Michael Tilson Thomas conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme of Russian music with star soloist Evgeny Kissin, whose Tchaikovsky concerto partially fulfilled expectations, but not more.

The London première of Georg Friedrich Haas' cult phenomenon in vain was given as part of Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival, by London Sinfonietta and conductor Emilio Pomàrico – a rhetorically brilliant performance.

Read our review of David McVicar's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare in its 2013 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Georgian violinist Liana Isakadze and Finnish organist Kalevi Kiviniemi performed a joint recital at St James's Church, Paddington.

A strange instrument purportedly invented by Leonardo da Vinci has been making headlines recently. But what's the real history behind this instrument?

Violist Antoine Tamestit didn’t seem like much a soloist at the opening of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy on Tuesday night, in Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra’s second performance of this programme at the Barbican. His viola lolling casually at his side, Tamestit gazed pleasantly at the orchestra, nodding along with them from time to time.

The Southbank’s The Rest is Noise continues to draw the crowds, although the promise of Steve Reich himself can’t have made this concert too hard to sell. Reich’s own contribution to this evening, the culmination of a weekend of music and events entitled “Superpower”, was limited to some clapping and letting go of a microphone.

Despite the frequency with which the two composers are compared, Thomas Adès’ music seldom sounds very much like that of Benjamin Britten. But Adès has an uncanny knack of performing Britten’s music in such a way that it resembles his own.

With a debut opera for ENO in the pipeline for next year and residencies with both Wigmore Hall and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, things are currently looking bright for Julian Anderson. To celebrate this, Wigmore Hall turned 2 November into Julian Anderson Day, devoting two concerts and a talk to exploring his music.

Irvine Arditti is turning 60 this year, but the real landmark perhaps comes next year, when his eponymous string quartet turns 40. The astonishing amount of good they have done contemporary music in this time deserves a ton of celebration in 2014.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Bryce Dessner had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Bent Sørensen had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Peter Reynolds had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Joahnnes Maria Staud had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Georg Friedrich Haas had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what David Lang had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Unsuk Chin had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what David Bruce had to say.

Part of Bachtrack’s Contemporary Music Month, Paul Kilbey takes a look at concert programming of 20th- and 21st-century music in several venues around the world.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Michael Cutting had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Kaija Saariaho had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Carl Vine had to say.

Daniil Trifonov dazzled, for sure, but at times he did slightly more than that. And when he did dazzle, it was always very musical dazzling; he is far from the empty dazzler one might expect so young a virtuoso to be. No – there’s no doubt that Trifonov is a highly intelligent musician, as well as a highly talented one, and there was much to enjoy in this varied programme for Wigmore Hall.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Michel van der Aa had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Pauline Oliveros had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Gerald Barry had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Mark Simpson had to say.

Karlheinz Stockhausen has done rather well out of this weekend’s instalment of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival, with his music featuring in all three of the concerts as well as the mouthwatering additional event “Breakfast with Stockhausen”.

London, along with a large portion of the world, spent most of summer 2012 in awe of an elite group of athletes, cheering on their every move as they undertook a series of arcane but technically demanding tasks in public.

One of the key points underlying Southbank Centre’s epic festival The Rest is Noise is to place 20th-century music in its historical context, to show that this music – which might otherwise be considered intimidating – is more than just abstract sounds.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what James MacMillan had to say.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Lucinda Rimmer, one of the winners of the BBC Proms Inspire Young Composer Competition 2013, had to say.

If it was a little strange that Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 30th anniversary with the Philharmonia was celebrated with a traditional, unadventurous Sunday matinée programme which did little to challenge its audience, at least the quality of the performance made it clear why this conductor is so well loved and respected.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Jay Greenberg had to say.

For Contemporary Music Month, we interviewed a total of nineteen contemporary composers, from teenagers to octogenarians, asking them all the same six questions. Read the fascinating results here.

Bachtrack is asking the same six questions to many composers this month as part of its focus on contemporary music. Here’s what Anna Meredith had to say.

Peter Grimes may deserve the place it has gained in the operatic canon, but it’s not a work without problems.

Another fine season for the London Symphony Orchestra looks inevitable after the brilliantly played Mahler 6 they brought to the Barbican on Wednesday night. With the assured Thomas Dausgaard leading the way in this furious, huge march, the band amply showed its Mahler chops with some scintillating orchestral sounds.

There’s something strange about applauding at the end of very quiet music: it is counterintuitive to make more noise clapping than the performers made during the actual performance. But the appreciative Kings Place crowd in Hall Two knew the drill, and this concert of “Some Recent Silences”, as it was billed, proved justly popular.

Read about concert, opera and dance reviews from around the world in the period up to 11 September 2013.

Daniel Barenboim was onto something earlier this Proms season when he spoke of the “communion” between the Royal Albert Hall audience and the performers: there is a sense of deep, serious, joyous concentration at the Proms that more than compensates for the disappointing acoustic.