Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | 3 Stücke für Klarinette solo

Dutch virtuoso Lucie Horsch plays Baroque recorder – just not how we usually expect it.

Suntory Hall Chamber Music Garden celebrates Schoenberg's anniversary with a virtuosic and gripping performance of his unique song cycle Pierrot lunaire, featuring Michaela Selinger as the moon-drunk clown. 

A piecemeal evening of high musical values as the Adelaide Festival opens with short Stravinsky pieces rather than the usual substantial opera. 

The première of Bjørn Kruse's clarinet concerto proved disappointing, overshadowed by an energetic performance of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and conductor Han-Na Chang's fiery conducting.

Pierre Boulez builds a deceptively brilliant program featuring works by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra follows through on its execution.

The Hebrides Ensemble commemorate WW1 in an ingeniously crafted centenary programme at Edinburgh's Queen's Hall.

Venturing into the Paris of the 1910s and 1920s, the Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival continues its journey through a brambly thicket of 20th-century music. Sunday’s programme focused on the output of Igor Stravinsky, the Russian composer who famously engendered riotous uproar at the Paris Opera House in 1913 with his savage ballet Le sacre du printemps.

Before last night I had reserved judgement on John Adams’ Grand Pianola Music (1982), which I knew from CD but hadn’t previously heard live. It was an effect-piece, I thought, so while it had left me a little cold in recorded form, I was open to the possibility that this enormous, ecstatic major-key pile-up would blow me away in the concert hall.

Unless you’re actually performing it liturgically, it’s very difficult to know what to do with sacred music these days. The masses of Palestrina, the motets of Byrd, the cantatas of Bach – all seem to merit our attention today, but not for the religious reasons for which they were originally written.

When Stravinsky brought his radical ballet Petrushka to Vienna in 1912, the composer recounts in his autobiography, the orchestra was full of complaints about the demands of the score. Disillusioned by this, Stravinsky found comfort from the unlikely figure of the man who raised and lowered the stage curtains. “Don’t let’s be downhearted”, he said, “I’ve been here for 55 years...

This was a fine demonstration of the fact that the Three Choirs Festival is not just about singing. Nor is it confined to the cathedral, as this morning’s recital took place in the elegance of Hereford’s Shirehall.