Find articles | Renée Reitsma

The Warsaw Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra offered a program of Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Their performance at Cadogan Hall had outstanding moments but overall felt unremarkable.

Baiba Skride and Tugan Sokhiev joined the LSO at the Barbican for Messiaen, Bartók and Tchaikovksy. It was a memorable evening that demonstrated why the best performances are not necessarily the most faultless ones.

The Borodin Quartet’s played two Shostakovich quartets, as well as Beethoven Op.131. From the very first notes onwards they captivated the audience with their elegant and well-balanced sound.

The LSO and soloist Yuja Wang join Principal Guest Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas to celebrate his 70th birthday. 

Barbara Hannigan joined the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle for performances of Berg’s Three Fragments from Wozzeck and Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre. 

The BBC Symphony Orchestra continued to offer its audience adventurous programming, with this evening’s London première of Brett Dean’s Dramatic Personae.

The London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Rachmaninov Inside Out festival continued with a performance of the Russian composer’s Symphony no. 1.

Prokofiev and Bartók bring out the best in Lionel Bringuier in his Philharmonia Orchestra debut, joined by pianist Simon Trpčeski. 

Epic Sibelius and velvety Grieg from Sakari Oramo and Javier Perianes, but Stravinsky that was too neat and careful. 

The Concertgebouworkest's series based on 'the sublime' continues with an eclectic programme of Ockeghem, Ligeti, Varèse and Ravel at the Concertgebouw. 

The final orchestral performance of this year’s Gergiev festival saw the city of Rotterdam play host to St. Peterburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra.

Rachmaninov's The Bells proved the highlight of Prom 43, with fabulous soloists and huge choral forces who stole the show in the third movement.

Jonathan Nott and the London Symphony Orchestra deliver an energetic, precise and intense performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. 

The Philharmonia, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Christoph von Dohnányi explore swan songs of Richard Strauss, in his 150th anniversary this week, and Bruckner at the Royal Festival Hall. 

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Violin Concerto "Out of Nowhere" received its long overdue UK première by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leila Josefowicz. Flanked by Sibelius’ Pohjola’s Daughter and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5, this was an exciting programme played brilliantly under Sakari Oramo.

Ilyich Rivas conducts his first official performance with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme of Dvořák, Tchaikovsky and Mahler, concluding with a rare performance of Shostakovich's Symphony no. 1.

The UK-Russian Cultural Year is launched in London by the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio, in a programme of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. 

Rare Russian repertoire fails to catch fire, despite the best efforts of Osmo Vänskä and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Martinů’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra is a lively, catchy piece, and was played as such by the Labèque sisters and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov. Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 7 is, however, long, heavy and disquieting.

As part of the last full weekend of Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival, Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra presented a programme of British orchestral music from the 1990s.

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto and Britten Sinfonia succeeded in creating a dynamic and captivating programme at Milton Court, with a series of works conceived as a whole and leading up to Britten's Serenade.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s return to the London Philharmonic, of which he is the Guest Principal Conductor, was as usual greeted with a full and enthusiastic concert hall. His strengths in the French repertoire and choral music made him the perfect conductor for an evening of music by Dutilleux and Shostakovich, whose Tout un monde lointain and Symphony no.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 9 and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 4 are pieces of music from completely different ends of the spectrum. The lightness of the concerto is not to be found in the monumental symphony, and the only common point is that both pieces were written by the composers at a very young age (Mozart was 21, Shostakovich 24).

Few concert settings are as beautiful as St Martin’s Church in Colchester. A deconsecrated 15th-century church, it served as the venue for a concert of Shostakovich’s Third and Fifteenth String Quartets, played by the Gould Quartet (named after their first violinist Thomas Gould), part of the Roman River Festival. For a town with not many classical concerts, this was quite a treat.

Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival is continuing this season with programming focusing on the second half of the 20th century. Tonight’s music was a part of the festival’s Britten centenary celebrations, adding in works by Copland and Shostakovich.

Thankfully, when it comes to classical music, programmes around the theme of death tend to make highly energetic evenings. The eighth Prom of this year was no exception, as Thomas Adès led the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the world première of his new work Totentanz, but not after performances of two similarly themed works: Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto.

Concluding their concert run in the Barbican, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yo-Yo Ma and the London Symphony Orchestra presented a programme of works by Copland, Shostakovich and Britten. The musicians’ partnership was undoubtedly a successful one, with a completely sold-out Barbican.

The centenary of the première of The Rite of Spring – now that is something to celebrate. The Philharmonia, led by chief conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, did it in style, with Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy (who of course famously performed the Rite with Stravinsky on the piano), Amériques by Edgard Varèse (who was present at the première, and very much influenced by it), and a vi

Among the brilliant programming of The Rest is Noise festival in London, there was one concert this year that stood above all the others for me: the European première of Shostakovich’s opera prologue Orango. First discovered in an archive in 2004 by scholar Olga Digonskaya, Orango was never finished by Shostakovich, and indeed only a piano score remained.

The Moscow State Symphony Orchestra continued their European tour with three programs at the Cadogan Hall, all with works by Tchaikovksy. As far as programming goes, the MSSO played it safe, but when it comes to Tchaikovksy this is not necessarily a criticism.

Tonight’s concert was a prime example of the solid programming of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival. The concert, titled “Music from Dark Times”, included pieces by Webern, Berg, Bartók and Martinů, written between 1934 and 1941, which were indeed dark times for all these composers.

Continuing Woven Words, the Lutosławski festival, the Philharmonia Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen presented us with another evening of impressive music and impressive programming. Like featuring Ravael’s Daphnis et Chloé in the Lutosławski concert on 30 January, opening this evening with Debussy’s La mer proved an excellent decision.La mer is a piece that heavily relies on interpretation.

Britten’s Death in Venice suite, arranged by Steuart Bedford, is a continuous piece of music taken from the opera. As such, it is an extremely scenic work and even though it has its moments, I could not help but long for the actual opera rather than these excerpts (thankfully it will be performed by ENO later this year).

One of the most well-known pieces of the twentieth-century classical repertoire is of course Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.

One of the strange things about classical music is that we often hear pieces played without their original context. Ballet music is often performed as simply orchestral music, and many composers have made suites out of ballet or film music in order to make this even easier.

The Southbank Centre’s centenary celebration of Witold Lutosławski, titled Woven Words, can easily be overshadowed by the excitement of this year’s The Rest is Noise festival.

Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt is one of those works that never gets performed with all the context in which it was composed. The two suites Grieg compiled are often played and well-loved, but Peer Gynt was in fact written as the music for the dramatization of Ibsen’s poem of the same title.

Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite is a film score originally composed in 1938. It’s a piece with many contrasts, yet the recurring melodies and catchy rhythms make it a joy to hear. The first movement was introduced by Laura Gilroy on cornet, hidden in the wings of the concert hall, after which the percussion and flutes took over.

Aaron Copland was one of the most important American composers of the last century. The inclusion of his Clarinet Concerto and Dvořák’s Symphony no. 9 made this program one inspired by the US. The theme of this year’s Rotterdam Philharmonic Gergiev Festival, Sea & You, of course suits this beautifully – after all, we hear the skyscrapers coming up from the sea in Dvořák’s symphony.

Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead is an intense piece of music. Inspired by a painting by Böcklin, Rachmaninov tells us of the journey to the underworld. The first moments of the piece are crucial to any performance, and Valery Gergiev lead the Rotterdam Philharmonic into a heavy and emotionally laden rendition.

The Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Amsterdam’s foremost modern classical music venue, opened the music season with a day dedicated to percussion. The first concert included Stravinsky’s Suite from L’histoire du soldat (1918) and Varèse’s Ionisation (1929-31) and Hyperprism (1922-23).

The Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester are known as one of the best youth orchestras in the world, if not the best. As such, they do not shy away from the more difficult repertoire and tonight’s performance of Berg’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony no. 7 reaffirmed their reputation.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s love for Brahms is well-documented, which makes the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s season opening at the Concertgebouw all the more fitting. In a program of Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies, they showed once again why they’re an orchestra to be reckoned with.

The JeugdOrkest Nederland (Netherlands Youth Orchestra) have musicians ranging in age from 14 to 20, yet the artistic quality of their members is impressive. Tonight’s program seemed perfectly suited to their sensibilities; from Kyriakides’ complex and challenging Nerve, to the beautiful melodies and catchy rhythms of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no.

The Aldeburgh World Orchestra, made up of 119 youngsters with 32 different nationalities, only started playing together 3 weeks before this concert. Armed with this knowledge, the expectations of a concert understandably lessen: you expect it to still be good but not brilliant. But the orchestra did end up playing brilliantly, especially in Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5.

“Finnish tango” are two words that you might not expect to see together, yet here we were on a Monday night in the Concertgebouw, listening to exactly that. Violinist Pekka Kuusisto was joined by Iiro Rantala in the third concert of his Robeco Zomerconcerten residency and together they delivered a high-energy performance that found itself somewhere in between jazz, tango and classical music.

Chamber music recitals are usually more intimate and personal than big orchestral performances. Generally, this is a very pleasant thing as it there is less distance – literally and figuratively – between the musicians and the audience. Now when the chamber musicians include Pekka Kuusisto, it isn’t just a pleasant thing, it’s a fantastic thing.

When it comes to summertime concerts, visitors to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw are often lucky, and this year is no different: the Robeco Zomerconcerten offer a diverse and exciting program that was kicked off by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Vassily Sinaisky and Pekka Kuusisto with music by Elgar, Sibelius and Tchaikovksy.

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra presented a Russian program with a twist; “A Russian Flirt with Haydn”. All four works and three composers that graced the stage were influenced by Haydn, most obviously Schnittke and his Moz-Art à la Haydn. The music worked well together, though I would suspect that this is more due to the Russian background than Haydn’s influence.

Classical music is often portayed as being very serious, which is part of what makes it seem inaccessible at times. But this is a mistake: there are plenty of pieces that are, in a word, fun.