Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Piano Quartet in E flat Major, Op.47

Birthday concerts are strange things. If a hall is going to celebrate your birthday, you'd want to be in the audience and have some of your favourite musicians entertain you.

An thoroughly entertaining evening of a very high level of musicianship from Steven Isserlis and friends at Wigmore Hall. 

Youthful Mahler, earth-shattering Shostatovich and life-affirming Schumann, played by The Maisky Trio and Maxim Rysanov at the Istanbul Music Festival.

Yesterday’s all-Romantic programme displaced the usual thing with incredible panache, as Daniel Hope’s violin surveyed the ensemble with regal bearing. 

An all-Schumann chamber music concert doesn’t come around that often even at the Wigmore Hall, so I was delighted that the Modigliani Quartet presented a programme of his major chamber works with pianist Beatrice Rana.

The Schubert Ensemble on a mission to promote Schumann and Fauré's chamber works in their two concerts series this year at the Wigmore Hall. 

Technical proficiency and brilliant clarity prevailed in the Stratos Quartett's recital, without ever feeling staid or over-cautious. 

The Schubert Ensemble's good-in-parts performance of Schumann, Schubert and John Woolwich.

Given reports that an earlier instalment of this Jerusalem Quartet tour had been disrupted by protesters, it's pleasing to be able to write that there were no such disturbances here. It's a good thing too, because nothing should overshadow the exquisite music-making of this Israeli quartet, joined here by Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov. Melnikov and the quartet blended very well.

The cellist Natalie Clein was at the centre of this concert of Schumann’s chamber music, given as a part of the Schumann bicentenary celebrations at Kings Place. The programme explored works from different periods of Schumann’s creative life: two works for cello and piano from 1849, the turbulent Piano Trio No. 3 in G minor from 1851, and the joyous Piano Quartet in E flat major from 1842.