Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Lynn Harrell

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. 

The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók.

In an era in which orchestras are supposed to have lost their distinctive 20th-century sounds, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig is one that retains its characteristic dark hue, with fascinating wind timbres that simply refuse to blend into a homogenised whole. And yet there is refinement and virtuosity to match the world’s best orchestras.

Arguably the highest-profile visiting orchestra of the season, Riccardo Chailly brought his Leipzig orchestra to Birmingham for a duo of 20th-century Russian works. The large audience was not disappointed, Rachmaninov’s second symphony in particular shining in a magnificent performance.

An evening of French music, the notes from Debussy, Ravel and Dutilleux lingered in the sticky summer air long after the concert finished.Making their BBC Proms debut, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus, conducted by Donald Runnicles with chorus-master Christopher Bell, took command of the stage.