Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Inger Dam-Jensen

A feast of Strauss and Elgar delights all in Prom 19, featuring Vasily Petrenko, Inger Dam-Jensen, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Malin Hartelius and Palle Knudsen electrify an otherwise competent Don Giovanni in Copenhagen.

Thursday’s concert in the Oslo Concert House marked the end of an era. It was, along with the concert the following evening, the final concert of Jukka-Pekka Saraste, the orchestra’s principal conductor for the last seven years. Final, as in his final concert as principal conductor: the orchestra isn’t letting go of him that easily.

‘Intimate symphonic playing’: an oxymoron perhaps, but in the fantastic acoustic of Symphony Hall and with the polished playing of the CBSO, somehow these symphonies, even with the tooting trumpets, blaring bassoons and sonorous strings (not to mention the tonking timpani), had the feel of chamber music.

The evening’s music commenced with Ligeti’s Night; Morning, one of the composer’s last works before his emigration to the West. Although only a very short piece, it exhibits some of the compositional approaches that are now synonymous with Ligeti’s style.