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Three very different works from the long life of Richard Strauss are performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Simone Young.

Heaven on Earth from Edward Gardner and Isabelle Faust in the latest in the LPO's ‘Moments Remembered’ series at the Royal Festival Hall. 

In addition to the New York premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Duende: The Dark Notes, the evening is marked by an intriguing coupling of Strauss' Metamorphosen and Ravel's La Valse. 

“Go big or go home!” A new season opens with the CBSO and Chorus giving an epic Beethoven Ninth at Birmingham's Symphony Hall. 

Intimate and powerful, Fischer's performance with Camerata Salzburg feels like a match made in heaven. 

The multitalented soprano and conductor gives a stupendous performance with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. 

As Esa-Pekka Salonen reaffirmed in his brief introductory statement, “nothing can replace the ritual of a live event”.

Its theme of the passing of everything from cherry blossom to opera houses made this a programme for the artistic perils of our time. 

A warm, accomplished Metamorphosen needing a notch or two more anguish, followed by precision in Mozart's Gran Partita.

An unforgettable concert: the Belgrade Philharmonic and Gabriel Feltz were on top form in Strauss' Metamorphosen and Beethoven's “Eroica” Symphony.

Pared-down forces of the ACO performed pared down masterpieces, in a brilliantly conceived programme which included works by Wagner, Strauss and Mozart.

Conceptually, the programme of descending and rising fourths offered a real treat: in practice, the musicians' skill was in danger of being lost as they attempted to recover from their opening gimmickry.

After a shaky start with Metamorphosen, the Oslo Philharmonic embodies the evening's theme of transformation by ending on a stonker of a Petruskha, via the perenially fabulous Lise Davidsen.

Rattle and the LSO give hundreds of moments of individual brilliance in this most symphonic of song cycles, but with both soloists giving grounds for reservation.

Impeccable musicianship from the string soloists of the Oxford Philhamonic in stirring accounts of Brahms' String Sextet in G major and Strauss' Metamorphosen.

In a concert of two halves, Worcester Cathedral experiences unforgettable pain and pleasure in works by Strauss, Rasch and Janáček.

High wire Beethoven from Nicolas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra, truly live in every sense, with an entertaining deconstructed introduction from Collon with Tom Service.

A declamatory Bruckner Te Deum made up for a less exciting first half of Barry and Mahler. 

Contrasts abounding in serenades by Mozart and Strauss. 

In this last concert in the Leipzig Gewandhaus and Riccardo Chailly’s brief residency at the Barbican, all concerned were on top form. 

The second week of the Seattle Chamber Music Society's 2015 Summer Festival offered up an unusual juxtaposition of instrumental and vocal pieces, with a beautifully somber mood prevailing.

The RSNO shine in Strauss' and Bartók's contrasting responses to war, dislocation and loss, Metamorphosen and the Concerto for Orchestra.

Pianist Louis Schwizegebel's captures Mozart's subtlety. But the same virtue was sorely missing in Strauss' profound Metamorphosen.

Pre-concert talks need not brim with revelation to be rewarding. Another’s perspective can be enough to alter perception of a programme and resonance thereafter. Such was the case with Dr. Elaine Kelly's talk before this SCO concert entitled “The Pity of War”. Key to reflections on the relationship between war and music was diversity of approach.

The City of London Festival this year is ambitiously programmed, with a number of common themes running through the events.

The Mariinsky Orchestra are great, because Valery Gergiev arranges a schedule that only the great could sustain. In the two weeks before they arrived in Toronto, his musicians played six performances of Swan Lake in Berkeley, California. Then Gergiev took them back to St Petersburg (October 15–23) to play the operas Boris Godunov and Aida.

Pairing Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen with Mahler’s mighty Resurrection Symphony made for an emotionally exhausting season opener in Birmingham, taking a packed Symphony Hall from anguished lamentation to fist-clenched fury and, ultimately, shattering resolution.Strauss’ unique work for 23 solo strings is widely accepted as being a reflection on 1940s violence.

Composed in under a month in 1945 against the backdrop of a burning, war-torn Dresden, Strauss’ Metamorphosen provided the perfect opening to a concert which explored themes of desolation and mourning. Commissioned by Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, Metamorphosen is a composition for 23 strings, inspired by Goethe’s poem ‘Niemand wird sich Selber kennen’ (‘No one can know himself’).

The concert to open the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's 80th Anniversary Series was very much one of contrasts. With the promise of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the season seemed to be opening in celebratory style. However, the entire first half was devoted to Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, a piece which is a far cry from the triumphant finale of the Beethoven.

Edo de Waart, Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, chose for his contribution to the 2011 Arts Festival works by two Germanic composers spanning the late Romantic and early modern periods who were almost exact contemporaries. Richard Strauss coincidentally was born seven years before and died seven years after Alexander von Zemlinsky.