Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Sydney Symphony Orchestra

The Sydney Symphony, temporarily rehoused in the ornate Victorian style Town Hall, plays grandiose Wagner and safe Stravinsky. 

As the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall closes for extensive refurbishment, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performs early, massive Mahler under Simone Young. 

Contrasting works as the Sydney Symphony tackles Les Offrandes oubliées and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

C minor and C major are at the centre of Masaaki Suzuki's Haydn and Beethoven programme with the Sydney Symphony. 

Imogen Cooper joined the Sydney Symphony for a performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto. 

‘Dancing with the Orchestra’ was the last subscription concert of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and two compositions with a focus on dance bookended Béla Bartók’s Violin Concerto no. 2. 

This week’s subscription concerts of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra featured only British music that was composed in the last century; three very different works in terms of compositional approach and musical language.

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra scored a major win when they engaged Daniil Trifonov to visit for three orchestral concerts and a solo recital. 

One could hardly dream of a better concert to open the season than one featuring Maxim Vengerov as the guest soloist in Johannes Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major.

A tribute concert to the passing of the grand old man of Finnish music, Einojuhani Rautavaara, offers a programme that focusses on sonic beauty at the expense of a more rounded appreciation of the composer's output.

Take an overture from the Classical period, add a Romantic concerto and finish with a major work from the 20th century – a tried and proven concoction for a balanced orchestral concert. If these works follow a chronological order and become increasingly longer, so much the better.

The SSO left its usual venue to perform Gustav Mahler’s monumental Symphony no. 2 in C minor in the Sydney Town Hall.

The Sydney Symphony in a finely chiselled account of Vaughan Williams' “A London Symphony”, but groped for balance in Ravel and Bax.

Two days after his stimulating solo recital, Lang Lang returned to the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House for Grieg’s Piano Concerto.

Masaaki Suzuki’s debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Sydney's Indian Summer brightened by Russian themes. 

Both guest artists of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s concerts this week appeared in Australia for the first time: the octogenarian Christoph von Dohnányi and the versatile violinist, less than half his age, Carolin Widmann. The great German conductor must feel a certain pride in his ancestry, as he kept the Hungarian spelling of his surname.

A rare opportunitiy to hear Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoiles in Sydney. 

Contrasts abounding in serenades by Mozart and Strauss. 

Beethoven truly celebrated in Sydney, as another symphony cycle progresses. 

Beautifully interpreted performance of Mozart and Elgar at Sydney's Opera House, with Ross Edwards' White Ghosts Dancing. 

Alan Holley's Oboe Concerto formed the centrepiece of Miguel Harth-Bedoya's Sydney Symphony programme. 

Mozart and the Brits offered the chance to hear Britten and rarely performed Malcolm Arnold, courtesy of the Sydney Symphony. 

Anne-Sophie Mutter impresses Sydney in Dvořák and Beethoven, before a less magnetic “Eroica”. 

It is not often that the nominal title of a concert would consist of simply the name of its protagonists. Yet this is exactly what happened this week when the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s programme was called with laconic brevity: Cirque de la Symphonie.

Charles Dutoit displays his expertise in Berlioz and Respighi in a fine evening with the Sydney Symphony. 

A performance of Wagner’s epic Tristan und Isolde, a testimony for all-enduring love, is a welcome event anywhere in the world. 

Summer Nights on a winter's afternoon in Sydney, as Katarina Karnéus performs Berlioz with the Sydney Symphony. 

Steve Mackey's Violin Concerto entitled Beautiful Passing was the highlight in this Sydney Symphony concert which also explored popular Czech repertoire. 

Schoenberg's extraordinary orchestration of Brahms' G minor Piano Quartet completes a satisfying Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert under the baton of Matthias Pintscher. 

When Janine Jansen plays, you have to sit up and listen. Her interpretation of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D major impresses in Sydney. 

The 2015 Master Series of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra opened with a programme of Schumann and Mendelssohn put together with excellent taste and scholarly insight.

 Jean-Efflam Bavouzet impresses in Gallic repertoire, but his Beethoven took longer to win our reviewer around. 

Fiery Janáček and Lalo tempered by autumnal Brahms in Sydney in a concert which turned the usual structure on its head. 

Angels, Emperors and Heroes - Emanuel Ax continues his Sydney Beethoven cycle in style. 

Emanuel Ax launches into a cycle of Beethoven piano concertos in Sydney with classical elegance and wit. 

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra presented a versatile and truly international menu to its audience last week in a thrice-programmed concert titled “Heavenly Schubert” although it was Shostakovich who proved the strongest draw. 

For the second of his two concerts conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit presented a program consisting of highly contrasting works by Stravinsky and Mendelssohn, including Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, celebrating the 100th anniversary of work’s first performance in 1913.

The title of the latest Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert was simply “Organ Symphony”, referring to the work which was to form the second half of the evening’s concert – Saint-Saëns’ “Organ Symphony” in C minor.

A concert entitled “Askenazy’s Favourites” is always going to be intriguing, but perhaps more intriguing are his choices. If asked to pick what symphony Ashkenazy would choose to go in this concert, I would have thought that most people would have chosen a large-scale Romantic symphony, maybe Brahms, Rachmaninov or Mahler.

There are only a handful of composers whose music can provide enough variety to last a whole program. Beethoven is one of those composers. Not only that, but even today, some 200 years after his lifetime, his music continues to inspire, delight and challenge modern audiences. That is part of Beethoven’s enduring genius and legacy.The opening piece of the concert, the Grosse Fugue Op.

One of the pleasures of attending live concerts is discovering sounds that recordings often mask or fail to highlight. Occasionally, the sheer enormity of the experience can be so stunning that I reel from it for days. The “2013 Season Special Event” of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Thursday was one of those occasions.

Fate and Festivals was the rather bold title given to the latest Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert at Sydney Opera House in an evening which provided a great showcase for the full orchestra, demonstrating their great virtuosity, versatility and sensitivity as an ensemble.

For a composer who embraces the “popular” in music, using the subtitle High Art for his trumpet concerto is clearly a provocative but bold statement. Australian composer Graham Koehne has quoted Noël Coward’s play Private Lives, commenting: “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is”.

Continuing with Sibelius, the Sydney Symphony presented another Finnish epic in their latest concert, this time Sibelius’ Kullervo Symphony. However, first of all we were treated to a Ravel masterpiece, his Piano Concerto in D for the left hand.This concerto was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.

The latest Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert, entitled Legends by the Sea, was an intriguing mix of contrasting works by Sibelius, Fauré and Debussy.Sibelius’ Lemminkäinen suite was an entirely new discovery for me. If Ashkenazy himself describes it as containing “some of Sibelius’ best music”, it is definitely a discovery worth making.

The Sydney Symphony concluded their mini Russian series with an all-Tchaikovsky concert featuring one of his lesser-known concertos and a most beloved symphony.The first half was devoted to his Piano Concert no. 2 in G major, less recognisable than his first with its opening crashing chords, but every bit as endearing and lyrical.

I have always been skeptical of concert performances of operas. Operas are written to be acted, and the staging is needed to complement the music. This is what I thought before I saw this performance of Ashkenazy conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

All things Russian are the flavour of the month in Sydney at the moment. Last night, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under chief conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy embarked upon a mini-series of three Russian concerts to end the year. Recently returned from their highly successful tour of China, the orchestra was in sparkling form and played with freshness and vitality all evening.

Beethoven, Mozart, Angela Hewitt are all much loved names in the world of classical music. The promise of a Mozart piano concerto played by Angela Hewitt and a Beethoven symphony is enough to whet any music lover’s appetite. However, as in so many Sydney Symphony concerts, there was another work thrown in, which one could have been forgiven for glossing over in the evening’s publicity.