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The latest concert by the Spanish National Orchestra was a fascinating opportunity to explore the contrast between Wagner and Stravinsky.

The Collegium Vocale Gent, in the hands of Philippe Herreweghe, came and conquered Madrid with a memorable performance of Bach's St John Passion.

Interesting rediscovery of Veracini's first opera, composed for mythical castrati Senesino and Farinelly, and brought to life again by Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante.

Ton Koopman's distinctively lively tempi, coupled with a contagious delight to be making music, has a fairly magnetic effect when conducting Bach's Mass in B minor.

Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony bring Beethoven and Wagner to Madrid and fill the hall with vitality.

Natalia Gutman proposes an interesting reading of Bach's Cello Suites, but slips in the second half.

Giovanni Antonini and the Baroque Ensemble of the Orquesta Nacional de España perform Boccherini's "La Casa del Diavolo" on Hallowe'en night.

Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang play all three of Brahms' sonatas for violin and piano in one evening, without ever looking at each other. They did not seem to need to.

An evening entirely devoted to Schubert's four-hand piano music, with a glorious tandem of Andreas Staier and Alexander Melnikov.

András Schiff takes on, and astonishes with, the last sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

Diego Matheuz convinces the public in his Madrid debut conducting the Orquesta Nacional de España. Krysztof Wisniewski and Cristina Pozas shine as soloists, while Ginastera's Estancia was the highlight of the concert.

Nicola Benedetti mesmerizes the Madrid audience in Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, with Julian Kuerti framing the programme with Beethoven. 

"Carta Blanca" brings John Adams and the Attacca Quartet to Madrid. John's Book of Alleged Dances and String Quartet are played, alongside Beethoven's String Quartet in F major, Op.18 no.1.

Silences felt like the pillars in Lorin Maazel's reading of Sibelius' Symphony No.2 and the results were astonishing.

The Orquesta Nacional de España with violinist Veronika Eberle and organist Daniel Oyarzábal plays three nineteenth-century works: Berlioz's Roman Carnival overture, Dvořák’s Violin Concerto and Saint-Saëns' Organ Symphony.

La Grande Chapelle retrieves music from the New World to perform in Spain. A commendable effort, but it fell short of meeting the performance standard required in this repertoire.

Maria João Pires plays Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2 with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Adám Fischer. Haydn and Mozart top up a Viennese evening.

It seems unfair to describe this as a Jordi Savall concert, when in fact Xavier Díaz-Latorre, introduced as his collaborator, played at least as fundamental a role and provided some of the most memorable moments of the evening.

In commemoration of Britten’s centennial, the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical, in collaboration with the British Council programmed a series entitled “Britten Classics”. This concert was a highlight.

In his 2011 book Verdi and/or Wagner, currently doing the rounds in libraries across the UK for obvious reasons, Peter Conrad devotes the best of 400 pages to essentially draw all sorts of divisive lines: the sensual Italian song versus the cerebral German symphony; the radically different conceptions of tragedy (“Tragedy in Wagner is an act of will […] Verdi’s characters, unlike Wagner’s, would p

The Madrid Symphony Orchestra has a busy season ahead. In addition to taking care of all the productions of the Spanish capital’s opera house, they are presenting a series of concerts in the Auditorio Nacional, the city’s concert hall. The first of these proposed a programme devoted to Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky – in itself, illustrative of the level of their ambition.