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Gianandrea Noseda's Shostakovich symphony cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra took us right back to the composer's student days, with the punchy First. 

Most music Festivals only have to deal with demanding divas, mercurial maestros or bad weather. In Istanbul there is a lot more at stake.

Behzod Abduraimov brought his intense and brilliant pianism for his first recital on the main stage of Carnegie Hall

Violinist Keren Gomyo and conductor Cristian Măcelaru team up to provide a superb Tchaikovsly concerto. 

On day release from the Covent Garden pit for their annual evening in the limelight, the ROH Orchestra took a quick spin through works by Russia's Mighty Handful. 

“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. That description could apply to Shostakovich’s Fifteenth Symphony. It would also describe Valery Gergiev’s conducting.

For once, the musical menu was a good deal more sultry than the temperatures in the Royal Albert Hall as the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic made a notable debut in a programme full of what Rudyard Kipling may well have described as “more-than-oriental splendour”.

Rare Russian repertoire fails to catch fire, despite the best efforts of Osmo Vänskä and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Bach's Brandenburg concerto No. 3 (BWV 1048) doesn't have a slow movement. In the place where you would normally expect to find one, what's written out is just two chords. And in most modern performances, those chords get a perfunctory embellishment, a quick bit of a cadenza, and on we go. That's the shape in which the piece now sits in the classical canon, so nobody expects more than that.