Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Michael Weinius

A star-is-born performance from the young American bass David Leigh anchors a thrilling performance of the Ring cycle's dramatic conclusion.

A new production of Lohengrin at Oper Leipzig is conceived as an intimate chamber opera and succeeds with brilliant musical performances.

What to put with Beethoven's greatest statement on the universality of the human spirit? The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Sakari Oramo, Neil Ferris and Andreas Haefliger make a case for renewal.

In a state of almost child-like transfiguration and fulfilment, Strid's voice fully encompassed the extremes of the last scene.

Stemme as Brünnhilde delivered her opening battle cry in Victorian riding habit like one of Trollope's racier fox- hunting heroines.

Nearly 30 years after its European première, Nixon in China returns to Amsterdam for an engrossing concert performance in which the Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands, led by Kevin John Edusei, shines.

A superb orchestral performance from Lawrence Renes and the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra lights up Michael Cavanagh's well directed Nixon in China.

In Anna Russell's wittily deadpan analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she describes Wotan as “the head god” – pausing for dramatic effect before adding “and he's a crashing bore too.”

Given the spate of visually distracting, if not irksome productions which seem to blight the opera world these days, there is something to be said for concert performances.

German director Christof Loy’s second production for the Royal Swedish opera was of Wagner’s Parsifal. The cast is rather on the luxurious side as well, sporting three of the greatest Wagner singers working today – two of them Swedish, no less!Loy’s Parsifal is a distinctly human drama.

Thomas Søndergård made his BBC Proms debut at the end of a successful first season at the helm of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, bringing a hefty programme of Stenhammar, Szymanowski and Strauss to the Royal Albert Hall.It was a fascinating programme, with a first half of relatively underperformed works prefacing Strauss’ popular Alpine Symphony.

Few things could unite such a large group of people as the Hallé’s Meistersinger did tonight. Some 515 performers, drawn from three orchestras and five choirs, gathered to present highlights from the first two acts of Wagner’s opera and the third act in full.

What do Schubert’s Third Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde have in common? Not a whole lot, which is why it came across as rather puzzling that the two pieces should be programmed together. Yet, in the Oslo Philharmonic’s September 6 and 8 concerts, they were. The result was a mixed bag of two wildly different works, written almost a century apart.Schubert’s Symphony no.