Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Andrew Staples

Herrlich expressiv füllt Daniel Harding den Raum mit Klang, der einen direkt in der Magengrube trifft.

Sellars und Rattle schaffen einen Raum und Klang, der Bach mit seiner Deutung einer der bekanntesten Erzählungen der Welt lebendig werden lässt.

Herbert Blomstedt findet für Bachs Passionsgeschichte eine ebenso überzeugend klangfarbige wie anrührend-schlichte Gestaltung.

Regisseur Claus Guth und Laurence Cummings am Pult formen Händels Saul zu einem berührenden Gesamtkunstwerk.

Freiheit und Brüderlichkeit sind damals wie heute die zentralen Werte, die Europa ausmachen. Unter diesem Gesichtspunkt gegang das BRSO den Abschluss des Open Airs am Odeonsplatz it Beethovens Neunter Symphonie.

...ein fulminantes Comeback bei den Berlinern, das hoffentlich neue fruchtbare Basis für künftige Zusamenarbeiten ist.

Robert Schumanns zu Unrecht vergessenes Hauptwerk in einer luxuriösen Traumbesetzung unter der Leitung von Daniel Harding.

Der Text zu Das Paradies und die Peri mag unverfälschte viktorianische Sentimentalität sein, doch Schumanns Musik kann nicht anders als einen zu verzaubern, an einem Abend mit herausragendem Gesang von Bernarda Fink und Mark Padmore, und dem LSO in Topform unter der Leitung von Simon Rattle.

Daniel Harding conducts a handsome, moving account of Berlioz' Symphonie dramatique with the Berliner Philharmoniker. 

The performance was technically flawless, but left our reviewer unmoved.

Although both Bernstein's Jeremiah Symphony and Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise explore the role religion plays in the cultivation of the human spirit, they are in many aspects sharply contrasting works. This made for an appealing concert by Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain and their conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Challenging and vivid Bach in the first UK showing of Peter Sellars' staging of Bach's great liturgical masterpiece.

Amanda Majeski is magnificent in the title role; Ed Gardner shows total master of Janáček's music. But that's not enough to rescue a poorly thought out Richard Jones production.

It was especially effective to hear the line “One ever hangs where shelled roads part” with the vast hanging crucifix with its portrait of Christ dominating the scene behind.

Antonio Pappano and the Royal Opera Orchestra get the Ring cycle off to a blazing start; unusually, it's Lise Davidsen and the female cast who take the vocal honours.

Berliner Philharmoniker’s interpretation of Das Paradies und die Peri reaches for the heavens. 

Das Lied von der Erde may have been down-sized but it lost none of its stature in the Aurora Orchestra’s performance of a chamber arrangement of Mahler’s great song-symphony.

Edo de Waart opted frequently for slow, steady tempi that robbed the music of a lot of its inner vitality.

Like most honest listeners I crave a taste of turpitude in Salome.

The MSO and some suitably angelic singers deliver a remarkably bright, joyous interpretation of an already uplifting oratorio.

At the Barbican last night, Gerald Finley, John Adams and the BBC Symphony Orchestra combined to deliver the heaviest operatic punch I’ve been subjected to all year.

L'orchestre et le chœur de santa Cecilia ont marqué la fin de la Semaine Sainte d'un grand moment de musique et de spiritualité avec ce bel hommage au Cantor de Leipzig. 

The Oslo Philharmonic was left to tell the story due to some rather emotionless singing.

The Czech Philharmonic brings The Epic of Gilgamesh to life with audacity and flair.

Setting the opera in the backyard of a suburban house feels refreshingly honest: the ridiculous and simplistic tale of the evil witch, the prince and the maiden is rightfully returned to the arena of children's games, and adults look on indulgently, with a wink.

Pianist, composer and polymath Stephen Hough joined The Prince Consort for an evening of intriguing and startling gems, and a world première of Hough’s own witty, intricate, intimate and beautifully arresting art songs.

As Esa-Pekka Salonen resumes his Stravinsky series, he turns his attention to three underperformed works based on key figures of Greek mythology: Orpheus, Apollo and Persephone.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducts the Hallé in works by Bach, Stravinsky and Schumann.

Simon Rattle and the combined forces of the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus dazzled in a large-scale rendition of Haydn's oratorio that retained the speed, dexterity and precision of a period-instrument performance. 

Fingers and bows fluttered through dance-like figures and virtuosic passages packed with trills with astonishing clarity and brilliance.

Daniel Harding's love for Schumann's genre-defying work brought some strong playing from the LSO and deeply moving singing from his soloists and chorus.

Kasper Holten's new production fails to convince about the alleged virtues of Wagner's outcast comic opera.

The Aurora Orchestra defies tradition and turns Britten’s ghostly Turn of the Screw into a kind of a dramatic ‘installation’

A successful concert hall Rake's Progress at the Edinburgh International Festival with an impressively strong cast of singers, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Royal Conservatoire Voices under Sir Andrew Davis.

The BBC SSO and Ilan Volkov close EIF 2014's contemplations on 'Conflict and Culture' with dark Mills and dramatic Janáček.

A brave choice for a Proms season opener, but Elgar's ponderous score is presented in the best possible light by the BBC forces.

When most of us feel like we’re getting a little stale with a piece of work we’re doing – when the thoughts, words or ideas are drying up – we stop for a coffee, stretch our legs, or do a bit of internet browsing. When Richard Wagner realised inspiration was running low for Siegfried, he decided to have a break from it too.

How, I wonder, is it best for an opera company to treat a revival of a well-aired, well-liked, decent but not particularly radical production of a top ten opera? This was what the Royal Opera had to contend with in this season’s revival of David McVicar’s 2003 setting of Die Zauberflöte: many in the audience will have known every note of the opera, and several will have been thoroughly familiar wi

Who better to direct an all-Haydn programme than Adam Fischer? Co-founder of the Haydn Festival, he also founded the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, who recorded the composer’s entire symphonic output in Haydn Hall of the Esterházy Palace, Eisenstadt, Haydn’s former place of employment.

First published in 1759, Voltaire’s Candide was re-imagined for the concert stage by Leonard Bernstein in 1956. An operetta whose aim was to mock the belief that everything—literally, everything—is for the best, Candide was an ideal medium through which to critique the excesses of McCarthyism and the complacency of the Eisenhower administration in 1950’s US politics.

Easter wouldn't be complete without a performance of the St Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach's epic and intense interpretation of the crucifixion.

Over a hundred years after its première, Richard Strauss's opera Salome retains its ability to shock. The opera was adapted from Oscar Wilde's retelling of the biblical tale, in which Herod's daughter demands and receives the head of the prophet Jokanaan (John the Baptist) on a silver charger.