Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Lohengrin: prelude to Act 1

Debutant conductor Thomas Guggeis filled out the programme with a creation of his own – a fusion of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Meistersinger.

In his Carnegie Hall debut, the young Czech conductor leads a meaty and memorable program of Brahms and Wagner, with joined by Hélène Grimaud for Robert Schumann’s sole Piano Concerto.

The Dresden Music Festival public renew their love for Jan Vogler, who is joined by festival debutants from Parma. 

The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai impresses in “bleeding chunks” from Wagner operas at the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra save their finest playing of the evening until the end, Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. 

Interpreting music of his beloved Chopin, Emanuel Ax imbued every passagework with poetic sensitivity.

Expect the unexpected when Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO. There will always be something that works, and sharpens your musical sensibilities, and something that doesn't. Ligeti, Wagner and Jolas vie for attention with Brahms.

Pianist Sunwook Kim returns to the RSNO, while conductor Jonathan Stockhammer builds a coherent triptych out of three highly contrasting pieces.

Two rarely performed works and an evergreen show off the prowess of this first class orchestra.

The ASO and Maestro Spano have started out the orchestra’s 75th anniversary year with hot-blooded performances that matched Atlanta's weather. 

Nézet-Séguin leads Philadelphians and Joyce DiDonato in superb performances of Wagner, Bates, Chausson and Respighi.

Tragedy turns to joy in an evening laden with expectations and emotion.

Schumann and Wagner were twinned in a programme focusing on works written in 1850 with impressvie results. 

Gergiev and the Mariinsky excel in Act III of Tristan und Isolde with the help of star singing from Vekua, Westbroek and Nikitin; George Li shows promise in Liszt.

In Jaap van Zweden's first time conducting the New York Philharmonic since it was announced, earlier this year, that he would be succeeding Alan Gilbert as music director, the orchestra sounded more enlivened than they have in months.

Buribayev and NSO deliver a powerful Mahler 4 while Ailish Tynan sings of the heavenly delights, while Alina Pogostkina dishes up outstanding Mendelssohn.

A solidly brazen night from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Valery Gergiev that ultimately lacked sincerity and depth thanks to its quick-fire delivery.

A fine new edition of Mozart's Requiem recieves its UK première, overshadowed by a trenchant Sibelius Fourth from Opera North under Jac van Steen.

In his 2011 book Verdi and/or Wagner, currently doing the rounds in libraries across the UK for obvious reasons, Peter Conrad devotes the best of 400 pages to essentially draw all sorts of divisive lines: the sensual Italian song versus the cerebral German symphony; the radically different conceptions of tragedy (“Tragedy in Wagner is an act of will […] Verdi’s characters, unlike Wagner’s, would p

An allegiance to Welsh performers and composers is a major feature of this year’s tour by the National Youth Orchestra of Wales, with two native contemporary scores on the programme performed by a Welsh soloist and conductor. It could easily become cosy and parochial, but the results were amongst the NYOW’s finest achievements in recent years.

With a gleaming, glistening chord of purest A major, the man New Yorkers love to call “the Maestro” returned to the concert stage. His last public performance was a Die Walküre in May 2011, one that took its searing emotional power by maintaining the constant impression that it was about to disintegrate musically, just as Wotan’s worlds fell apart on stage and the conductor’s body buckled.

The Wagner bicentennial marches on, bringing grand sounds from practically every corner of the musical earth. What appear most frequently on concert programs are various extracts from the operas, such as the collection of preludes, overture, and vocal and orchestral excerpts offered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Daniele Gatti at Carnegie Hall.

How very fitting that the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra that claims to be made up of 128 soloists, should start Thursday’s concert and their European tour with perhaps one of the most soloistic orchestral pieces ever written: Ligeti’s Atmosphères.

It was, truly, music from another world. Opening the concert with György Ligeti's 1961 Atmosphères, the Berliner Philharmoniker started with the gentlest of wafting string tones with clustered woodwind sounding almost organ-like, whereupon layer after layer piled in, an infinite variety of orchestral textures shifting and swirling.

Returning after an absence of twelve years, Sir Simon Rattle—in his apprentice years back in the 1980s the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, now arguably the most well known and respected conductor of our day—led the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday night after an absence of twelve years.

Rotterdam’s annual Gergiev Festival is a very popular classical festival in The Netherlands and with good reason, their programs are always excellent and the appearance of former chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Valery Gergiev usually attracts big crowds.