Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Das klagende Lied (Song of Lamentation)

As the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall closes for extensive refurbishment, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performs early, massive Mahler under Simone Young. 

On a balmy evening in Liverpool, Vasily Petrenko led the RLPO in two works that explored differenet apsects of lamentation, preceded by a Straussian toboggan ride.

Prom 32 featured two works written in the same year, 1878, by composers who worked mainly in the same city, Vienna. Brahms was an established composer when he wrote his Violin Concerto for his virtuoso friend Joseph Joachim, while Mahler was just 17 when he started writing Das klagende Lied for a competition (the version played tonight was completed in 1880).

Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra planned to visit Hungary. but the tour didn't come off for reasons beyond their control. But the programmes they chose remained for the two London concerts on 26th and 29th January at the Royal Festival Hall. Big, complex programmes, held together by their references to separate Austrian and Hungarian traditions.