Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Concerto for oboe and small orchestra in D major

The 94-year-old conductor inspires the Latvian National SO to incandescent heights in Sibelius and Strauss

Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher pairs Webern's "idyll for large orchestra" with Richard Strauss' Oboe Concerto, featuring an elegant Philippe Tondre as soloist.

Strauss’ Oboe Concerto was flanked by unfamiliar gems of Louis Spohr and Alexander Zemlinsky.

An outstanding account of Smetana's Ma vlást in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie was prefaced by Straussian oboe nostalgia courtesy of Albrecht Mayer. 

Nicholas Collon and his Aurora Orchestra remind us that classical music is still made by us, for us, in Rihm, Strauss and Mozart.

A concert entitled “Askenazy’s Favourites” is always going to be intriguing, but perhaps more intriguing are his choices. If asked to pick what symphony Ashkenazy would choose to go in this concert, I would have thought that most people would have chosen a large-scale Romantic symphony, maybe Brahms, Rachmaninov or Mahler.

Although Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique was the headline work for the September 27th Cleveland Orchestra concert at Severance Hall, the big news was principal oboist Frank Rosenwein’s personal triumph as soloist in Richard Strauss’ 1946 Oboe Concerto, with music director Franz Welser-Möst conducting.

There was an atmosphere of end-of-term exuberance at the Sage Gateshead this evening, as Northern Sinfonia brought their 2011/12 season to a close with a programme conducted by Principal Conductor Mario Venzago that cleverly mixed nostalgia and excitement.