Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Symphony no. 5 in B flat major, WAB 105

From Mendelssohn’s intimacy to Bruckner’s monumental scale, Eschenbach’s young orchestra reveals chamber-like sensitivity and steely discipline, with Midori’s interpretation standing as the evening’s emotional and artistic highlight.

Ádam Fischer and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment bring new light and life to Bruckner's most imposing cathedral in sound. 

Kirill Petrenko conducts a magesterial account of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony after a trio of motets by the BBC Singers. 

Where angels fear to tread? Günter Wand held back until he was in his sixties before daring to conduct this work. Robert Trevino (born 1984) sees no reason to wait.

Herbert Blomstedt returned to Cleveland in a memorable and often transcendent performance of Bruckner’s Fifth.

In what was a non-textbook performance of Bruckner, Oramo achieved a performance of utmost thrill, replete with clarity and conviction.

Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra brought romantic storms with Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor and Bruckner's Fifth to the Royal Festival Hall.

Imogen Cooper joined the Sydney Symphony for a performance of Beethoven's Second Piano Concerto. 

Bruckner's inventive Fifth was the only dish on the menu in a thoughtful, but incomplete interpretation from Andris Nelsons and the Philharmonia.

The RSPO's brass section is outstanding in Sakari Oramo's clear, detailed and particularly Nordic reading of Bruckner 5.

Leading Staatskapelle Berlin, Daniel Barenboim offers yet another take on one of his favorite composers

The nonagenarian Stanisⱡaw Skrowaczewski with the London Philharmonic Orchestra perform one of Bruckner’s greatest works, his Fifth Symphony.

Bruckner, like all symphonic-minded composers after Beethoven, had a finale problem, or so the conventional wisdom goes. How, after all, could one follow the Ninth? At his very greatest, Bruckner solved this with ingenious formal devices (his Fifth Symphony) or through sheer force of emotional and religious will (his Eighth).

The Abbey at Ebrach in Germany has all the advantages and disadvantages one might expect of a large ecclesiastical building as a venue for a Bruckner performance and, as far the sound goes, they are summed up in one word: reverberation.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder are not performed often, and one reason involves simple logistics. Not only is a professional orchestra of gigantic proportions required, but also five soloists with Wagnerian voices, a narrator, an eight-part mixed chorus, three four-part male choirs, and a conductor crazy enough to try to keep some 400 musicians from going off the rails.

Entering a standing-room-only hall on Tuesday evening in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Leonidas Kavakos calmly made his way to center stage, hugged the concert master, smiled at the orchestra and then cued the beginning of Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 3 in G major, which he both played and conducted.

The great jazz composer Bob Brookmeyer used to instruct his students that they should never write a solo section in their composition until it was absolutely inevitable that a solo should take place.

Bruckner moved to Vienna in 1868 to take up the post of Professor of Organ, Harmony and Counterpoint at the Conservatory. Seven years later, in 1875, he was still ruing the day he had left his local city of Linz: only one symphony had been performed, his income was meagre and he envisaged going to debtors’ jail, “where I can descant to my heart’s content on my folly in ever coming to Vienna.

The Wiener Symphoniker has suffered recently from more late conductor cancellations than most orchestras, and things reached a peak last season when their chief conductor Fabio Luisi pulled out of a string of engagements in order to substitute for James Levine at the Met.