Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565

Seattle audiences welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison to Benaroya Hall this past weekend with the west coast premiere of his work, What Do We Make of Bach? for orchestra and obbligato organ.

Kantorow had his work cut out for him, playing masses of cluster chords and arpeggios up and down the keyboard.

Bach presented in various orchestral transcriptions made for a powerful, entertaining evening in Barcelona. 

Celebrating Youth, Music and Education in Roof-Raising Style: Ten Pieces Secondary comes to the BBC Proms 

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra presented a space-themed concert in an exciting evening’s programme of many well-known pieces rolled into a couple of hours.

Here's a winning formula to pack a concert hall for a Saturday night organ recital: book one of the country's best-known actor-managers to front the evening, invest in televisual effects, and write a good script. 

Adoring and knowledgeable fans, lots of good humour and a tendency to wear silly hats: this description could fit any Proms audience, but Prom 2 was not quite the usual Prom. For one thing, the silly hats were mostly fezzes, and the audience’s expert knowledge extended to being able to identify the weird alien life forms that had invaded the Royal Albert Hall.

I must admit that Bach through Brass, as this concert was entitled, filled me with a certain amount of trepidation. Bach, on instruments for which the music in the programme was not designed, on instruments which were not even around in Bach’s time (at least not in their modern-day form), did not sound immediately appealing; nevertheless, something drew me in, and I was pleasantly surprised.

If there’s one glowing aspect missing from the burgeoning classical music scene in Istanbul, it is chamber music. The city has been a host to an increasingly diverse range of musical performances and festivals in the last few years, thanks to rather effective sponsorship arrangements, as well as small organizations, and sometimes even individuals, taking charge in organizing concert series.

I have to confess that an event like this is not within my normal musical radar. My music reviewing and listening is predominantly serious classical, and most of it is for a specialist part of that wide repertoire. So it was a slightly brave, or foolhardy, idea to offer to review one of these musical spectaculars at my local castle.