Find articles | Philip May

As I had both hoped and expected, Widmann's Babylon Suite had an undercurrent of knowing wickedness and a sense of self-awareness that one would find in a Stravinsky ballet score.

Grand Holst and the première of Mark Bowden's A Violence of Gifts, performed with bombastic gusto and colour.

As part of the Philharmonia's City of Light series, the Gould Trio performed two Impressionist Piano Trios around two contrasting French Duos.

With so much focus - understandably - on London's concerts during the Proms season, it is a delight to be able to listen to and attend various other related performances across the UK. 

The most exciting of the works presented by Quatuor Tana was the première of Yann Robin's Second Quartet, Crescent Scratches. As explained by Robin, the quartet is founded on the idea of pulsating glissandi and 'scratching' as used on a DJ turntable.

A celebration of Wales in the St David's Day Gala in Cardiff. 

Both a grand and intimate programme from Imogen Cooper, centred around the music of Robert Schumann. 

Tonight, on Benjamin Britten’s birthday 100 years to the day, Llŷr Williams performed a selection of Britten’s piano music alongside works by Haydn, Bridge and Schubert, in a concert concluding the Gregynog Festival.

I have come to look forward to the variety of repertoire often presented by Mark Eager and the Welsh Sinfonia, often mixing more familiar works with other, less-prominent compositions. This evening’s short and simple concert offered a programme in this very vein: four 20th- and 21st-century composers with somewhat different yet complementary styles.

I find it difficult to remember the last time I attended a concert in which I was met with just about everything that I wanted to hear, settled alongside facets of performance that I hadn’t yet encountered. Perhaps tonight was, indeed, my first such experience.Thomas Søndergård’s rendition of Poulenc’s Gloria realised everything that I find I intuitively hope to hear from it.

In a similar vein to the previous evening’s rather German-orientated “Grosse Streichquartette” concert given by the Artemis Quartet, tonight’s mozart@augsburg concert contained Beethoven piano sonatas interspersed with recitations: a “Sea of Harmony”. It was also to be the last of the festival’s concerts that I was to experience this year.

The Mozartkirche, a grand Catholic church in Biberbach, provided a somewhat reverential setting for the sixth concert in the mozart@augsburg series. It was also a distinct contrast to the elaborate Small Golden Hall in which the previous evening’s concert, “Chamber Music Pearls”, was held.

30 August to 14 September 2013 marked the second year of the mozart@augsburg festival, held both in and around the city.

For years now, Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony has been at the head of my bucket list of works to hear in concert – and this Prom with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vänskä gave me the chance.

As a fan of contemporary music and, indeed, minimalism, I was disappointed to find the programme at Prom 50 underwhelming overall. This was not for lack of trying, however – I wanted to enjoy it. But after allowing the music time to sink in further and my thoughts to settle, my opinions only seemed to have become more resolute.The evening started promisingly.

After spending a short time away on the Southern coast of France, it was welcoming to attend a concert drawn from both sides of the continent shortly after returning: a French composer, two English composers and a work of a Frenchman arranged by a contemporary English musician.

Tonight’s Stockhausen Prom was in equal parts sonic experience and performance.In an introduction to a performance of Gesang der Jünglinge in 2001, Stockhausen proposed that “if you close your eyes every now and then, you might even see these angels”. In a concert performance this isn’t an empty suggestion; Gesang der Jünglinge is a truly acoustic experience.

On Wednesday evening the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Adrian Partington, presented a programme of choral music by the two musical friends Poulenc and Britten.

After hearing the Welsh Sinfonia’s last concert in January 2013, I was pleased to have the opportunity to attend their Gala Finale concert this month. This was particularly the case since it included a première of a new composition by Roxanna Panufnik, daughter of Andrzej Panufnik, whose Epitaph I heard finely performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in March.

“Three concertos and an epitaph” is how the Wales Millennium Centre summed up tonight’s concert. Not only did the selected programme focus almost exclusively on three composers’ essays in the concerto genre, but it also spanned a narrow period of time within the mid 20th-century: 22 years in total, or 38 if one includes Andrzej Panufnik’s Katyn Epitaph.

There are times when a concert, even those featuring famous and oft-heard works, can be utterly rejuvenating.Tonight’s performance presented a pair of grand minor-key works by two emotional heavyweights of the 19th century.

In light of this year’s Britten centenary, The Welsh Sinfonia has slipped its foot in the door with what will be one of many commemorative concerts to be given over the next eleven months.