Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Paul Watkins

Alessio Bax's inaugural London Festival of Chamber Music sets off with a spring in its step.

An uplifting performance by the Swedish orchestra takes us on a journey from the Isle of Staffa to Bohemian forests via the Carpathian Mountains in the venue's Nature Unwrapped season. 

After the Sextet there they played a tender, bittersweet arrangement of Brahms' Lullaby created the day before that sent the audience home looking forward to Franz Schubert in 2020.

After tumbling deliriously to the end, if they had played one of Brahms' Hungarian Dances as an encore, they would have had them the audience dancing in the aisles.

There was a palpable sense of communion during a performance bringing these great musicians together at Carnegie Hall for the first time. 

Two works of personal victory, written at virtually the same point in history and against a backdrop of suffering, made up this very successful concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. 

Three English composers receive fine performances from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Bright and energetic Walton and a promising, highly lyrical Concerto from Watkins, followed by taut Webern and commanding Brahms from Søndergård and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Detlev Glanert's homage to Johannes Brahms as a curtain-raiser to Paul Watkins' performance of Haydn's C major cello concerto and a welcome anticipation of Brahms' first symphony conducted by Semyon Bychkov.

The Nash Ensemble toasted its golden anniversary with a selection of golden French repertoire – some of it more familiar in orchestral form – at its Wigmore Hall gala.

Cellist Louisa Tuck and the Royal Northern Sinfonia, with guest conductor Paul Watkins, deliver a lyrical and coherent interpretation of Britten's complex Cello Symphony.

When a programme is well put together and nicely themed, it is quite easy to turn one’s attention away from the sound of music, and onto the history of music. PCM 4 at Cadogan Hall was breezily introduced by the BBC compere as a programme marking Britten’s centenary, exploring his relationship with his peers, and celebrating his friend Lutoslawski. Yes, it did all that.

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.

The Nash Ensembles' "Echoes of Romanticism" series at the Wigmore Hall, of which this concert was a part, is not really an exploration of romanticism as such, but rather a charting of the rise and fall of Teutonic music between Mozart and Schoenberg.

It sounds almost like heresy to describe a Beethoven composition as “light”, but it would be appropriate for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert on Saturday. His Symphony No. 6 in F, Op. 68, Pastoral, was like soufflé to the crème brûlée of Elgar’s Cello Concerto and Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture.