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Tchaikovsky’s warhorse piano concerto is given a performance stripped of all showmanship. Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra completes this oddly programmed concert from the RLPO.

The RPO were on ripe form in works that still need such fine advocacy, and which deserved a much larger audience.

This Anvil concert revealed a “two sides of the same coin” quality from an illustrious orchestra that left a mixed, but mostly favourable impression.

A programme steeped in the cultural experience of 20th-century Russia offered intrigue, thrills and a surprising dash of humour.

This concert, given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru, was a great start to the new year! 

The joy of listening to Brahms’s piano concertos in a concert hall – especially one with such fine acoustics as St David’s Hall, Cardiff – is that textures and harmonies that can sound thick, muddy and ill-balanced in recordings come across with all their intricate, closely-woven contrapuntal writing clear and thrilling.

Jamie Phillips conducted the Hallé in a programme of Berlioz, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky which neatly combined vivacity and profundity in front of a packed Bridgewater Hall.

Still partying on: John Lill's 70th birthday celebrations continue with a Beethoven recital in the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

The second concert of John Lill’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle saw this national treasure back in the form that has earned him his reputation. After a slightly disappointing first outing, it was refreshing to hear such commitment throughout a concert, even in the smaller Piano Sonatas (nos. 3, 6 and 10); never did these earlier works feel lesser than their sprawling companion, Piano Sonata no.

The first of concert of John Lill’s Beethoven piano sonata cycle at Cadogan Hall saw a warhorse of the concert platform performing one of the great warhorses of the piano repertory. Alongside the concluding Op. 57 sonata – the Appassionata – we heard three lesser-known works, namely Op. 10 no. 3 in D, Op. 22 in B flat, and Op. 54 in F, presented in chronological order.

Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge is not a work often heard in concert halls but deserves to be performed more often, Hong Kong Sinfonietta conductor Yip Wing-sie said at the start of the concert last night at the City Hall. The orchestra’s rendering of this moving musical tribute vindicated her statement.

Under the baton of Christian Kluxen, their young Danish Assistant Conductor, there was a distinctly Scandinavian flavour to the RSNO’s concert on Friday evening. While not sold out, the Usher Hall was reassuringly full, the audience no doubt drawn by the familiar names on the programme as well as undeterred by the novelties.

When one thinks of the ‘X factor’, it’s fairly certain that the first image that comes to mind is not that of a quiet, unassuming man in his mid-sixties, clad in evening dress.