Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, song cycle, Op.31

Howard Griffiths conducts English music in Belgrade. Ian Bostridge and Nikola Ćirić star and Britten's Serenade and Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony wow the Serbian audience.

Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO demonstrate the mercurial tension in Britten’s Serenade and Elgar’s First Symphony in the season finale. 

Atmospheric Britten from Ben Goldscheider and Robin Tritschler, and insightful playing from the BFO under Peter Manning, with students from the Bobby Moore Academy at the evening's heart.

A cabinet of curiosities: Christoph Koncz has an unconventional take on two Viennese symphonies, yet contributes well to an exemplary performance of Britten's most famous song cycle.

The  Zurich Chamber Orchestra gives fine performances of works by three leading 20th-century British composers in Zurich’s Tonhalle.

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

Forget those po-faced tenors of yore; this is joyous music and Allan Clayton was just the man to deliver it.

The Berlin Philharmonic, reunited with its former chief conductor Sir Simon Rattle, framed Britten’s Serenade, commandingly sung by tenor Andrew Staples, with two complementary sets of orchestral variations.

The impressive Amsterdam Sinfonietta showed lucidity and depth in Britten and Shostakovich, with tenor Ilker Arcayürek and horn player Felix Klieser adding much to the quality.

Aurora Orchestra prove too muscular for accompanying voices in Wigmore Hall, but Stephenson's setting of Rimbaud's poetry is impressive.

Themes and Variations from Brahms and Dvořák, haunting Britten with Stuart Jackson and Alberto Menéndez Escribano, John Wilson standing in to conduct at City Halls, Glasgow. 

Composed for Peter Pears and Dennis Brain, Britten's Sereande for Tenor, Horn and Strings presents fearsome challenges for performers. Mark Padmore and Katy Woolley met those challenges superbly.

Violinist Pekka Kuusisto and Britten Sinfonia succeeded in creating a dynamic and captivating programme at Milton Court, with a series of works conceived as a whole and leading up to Britten's Serenade.

One of the challenges facing performers, and listeners, of Britten’s music is the availability of the superb recordings that Britten made, often with the musicians for whom the music was written; performers have to take guidance from the recordings without slavishly imitating them, and us listeners (and reviewers even more so) have to be alert to the danger of making comparisons.

If there was an overall theme for this week’s Cleveland Orchestra concert, it was not discernable, which did not in any way reduce the pleasure that it brought. The distinguished Polish conductor Marek Janowski made his second appearance with the orchestra, the first having been in 2012.

Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival is continuing this season with programming focusing on the second half of the 20th century. Tonight’s music was a part of the festival’s Britten centenary celebrations, adding in works by Copland and Shostakovich.

When a programme is well put together and nicely themed, it is quite easy to turn one’s attention away from the sound of music, and onto the history of music. PCM 4 at Cadogan Hall was breezily introduced by the BBC compere as a programme marking Britten’s centenary, exploring his relationship with his peers, and celebrating his friend Lutoslawski. Yes, it did all that.

This second of two SCO Britten centenary concerts saw its subject juxtaposed with two living British composers and Mozart. Cynics might consider the closing Symphony no. 40 in G minor (1788) a reward for surviving the rest of the programme’s modernity.

Conductor H.K. Gruber’s visits to the BBC Philharmonic are guaranteed to be unmissable concerts of the season; with unquenchable enthusiasm and pride in the music he programmes, Gruber, (known affectionately to all as “Nali”), always assures a stirring performance.

In celebration of the centenary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, the Hong Kong Arts Festival this year is presenting three programmes of works by the composer in collaboration with local choral group Die Konzertisten. The first of these, collectively called “The Britten 100 Project”, consisted of his early works based on religious themes completed mostly in the decade between 1934 and 1943.

In light of this year’s Britten centenary, The Welsh Sinfonia has slipped its foot in the door with what will be one of many commemorative concerts to be given over the next eleven months.