Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Violin Concerto, Op.36

Schoenberg advocate PatKop performs the knotty Violin Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and young Finn Tarmo Peltokoski. 

Capable of being defiant when needed, Kopatchinskaja impresses with the seemingly infinite timbral variety of her pianissimos.

Vladimir Jurowski is fond of grand statements, and sometimes off-the-wall programming – genius when it works, baffling when it doesn’t. 

This Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra concert was titled simply "Degenerate" and designed to showcase works that were – or would have been – banned for their so-called "degeneracy" during the Third Reich, either for the perceived "radical" nature of the music or for the simple fact the composer was Jewish.

Few quotations have surprised, delighted and saddened me as much as this remark by Schoenberg: "There is nothing I long for more intensely than to be taken for a better sort of Tchaikovsky. People should know my tunes and whistle them." This was one of several anecdotes offered by Discovering Music's Stephen Johnson in the pre-concert talk on "The New Century".

Arnold Schoenberg rarely forms the backbone of orchestral concerts in either of his two homelands, and in an ideal world there would be more concerts like this, particularly in Vienna.