Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | String Quartet no. 14 in D minor, "Death and the Maiden", D.810

In a problematic acoustic environment, the Brodsky Quartet's sound did not always live up to the expectations.

Soloists John Matthew Myers and John David Smith proved an ideal pairing in Britten's monumental Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

The four gifted players of the Merel Quartet perform an unforgettable Haydn and Schubert programme at Zurich’s Tonhalle Maag.

The annual Davos Festival offers a platform to gifted young musicians from around the world to explore and exchange musical genres in a stellar alpine landscape.

The classical masterpieces of Haydn and Schubert miss the spot, but Ligeti and Poulenc enthral in the splendid setting of the Concert Room, St George’s Hall, Liverpool.

It takes artistic invention and considerable courage to design a concert programme solely around tragic topics; yet the connecting link between the various items on the last subscription concert by the Australian Chamber Orchestra was – directly or indirectly – death and great composers’ reaction to it. The key of C minor invariably carries sombre overtones in the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Viennese classics from the Brodsky Quartet in Leamington Spa. 

In honour of Schubert’s 218th birthday, Wigmore Hall decided to invite celebrated associate artists the Takács Quartet to perform a selection of the composer’s works for string quartet. 

Even if the joke is good, it’s all in the telling, as they say. Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spaß (“A Musical Joke”) is good, but it probably meant more to its contemporaries than it does to us today. It is Mozart’s satire of the incompetent composers, musicians and copyists of his time. It’s an inside joke, for all practical purposes.

Previously, for me, the term “Chamber Orchestra” has meant an ordinary orchestra, only smaller: apart from the sound being somewhat thinned out and consequently cleaner, I don't expect a fundamentally different experience. Or, didn't, that is, until last night at Cadogan Hall, where I saw the Australian Chamber Orchestra for the first time.

The Australian Chamber Orchestra, known both for its innovative programming and for the tightness of the ensemble playing, displayed both qualities on Saturday night, the second stop in a five-city, nine-concert tour.

The three pieces performed this evening at the Sage Gateshead by Northern Sinfonia’s string section were very different in character, but they had one thing in common (apart from the alliterative composer names): they all were originally written as chamber pieces, and later arranged for orchestra.