Guide to Bohuslav Martinů

Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the LPO offer an eclectic and unusual mix of works which, despite commendable playing, never quite added up to a satisfying whole.

In a typically ambitious programme, Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra explored how four Czech composers responded to imprisonment, exile and renewal.

Intergenerational ensemble-making was the key feature of the opening concert of Suntory Hall's Chamber Music Garden festival, produced by eminent cellist and the hall's President Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi.

Alban Gerhardt in Martinů’s Cello Concerto no. 1 was a dazzling achievement in the Belgrade Philharmonic’s concert under Uroš Lajovic, along with atmospheric Sibelius and polished Tchaikovsky.

Is there any instrument more bittersweet than the viola? The violin does the acrobatics, the cello is more conventionally beautiful, but the viola sits in the middle of the orchestral palette like no other instrument. Neither high nor low, it’s perfectly placed to embody the contradictory and the conflicted, ideal for a sense of desire denied or of fulfilment deferred.

Top notch musicianship from the Schubert Ensemble in their final appearance at King’s Place. 

Conductor Tomáš Netopil combines the best of two worlds at the Dvořákʼs Prague festival.

The effervescent conductor took six little-known Czech works into another ether: one in which the footprints are invisible.