Prom 70, the last concert for the BBC Symphony Orchestra prior to the Last Night festivities, featured three talented Americans: composer Missy Mazzoli, pianist Jeremy Denk and conductor Karina Canellakis.
As a composer, what do you do when you are commissioned a full-length orchestral work to commemorate the anniversary of a renowned concert hall? Do you try to write something celebratory? Not in Mark-Anthony Turnage's case.
Maurice Steger brought this essential but under-represented instrument from Renaissance and Baroque chamber and ensumble music to a mainstream concert hall.
Considering how rarely celebrated diva Cecilia Bartoli appears in London, Wigmore Hall certainly pulled off a coup by making her duo concert with Philippe Jaroussky happen.
Until now I have been fairly sceptical about theatrical stagings of oratorios and other sacred works, so I was curious but cautious about the staging of Monteverdi's Vespers at the Holland Festival.
The advantage of staging a rare opera such as Cavalli's Hipermestra at Glyndebourne this year is that the director can work with a blank canvas without audience’s preconceptions.
In this year's London Festival of Baroque Music, the programme of Austrian Baroque rarities by Swiss-based early music group Les Passions de l’Ame particularly caught my eye.
This Lenten concert given by Currentzis and MusicAeterna at Vienna’s Konzerthaus was certainly solemn and atmospheric – the auditorium was shrouded in darkness from beginning to end.
Cellist Gautier Capuçon and pianist Frank Braley are artists I have previously admired in many chamber ensemble concerts, but their recital at Kings Place was the first time I heard them as a duo.
Following the example of Rebecca Lentjes’ January feature “Top Ten Living Women Composers”, I have made my pick of women composers of the Baroque period in celebration of International Women’s Day.
At 82, Sir Roger Norrington may have slowed down his conducting career but I’m very pleased to report that he still loves stirring things up at his concerts.
On the final day of Spitalfields Winter Festival, Solomon's Knot performed Bach's Mass in B minor with a wonderful sense of community which we the audience also shared.
The spirit of Herbert von Karajan lives on in Tokyo's Suntory Hall, built in the quest for “the world's most beautiful sound”. In the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the hall is aiming to appeal to an increasingly global audience.
The Tokyo Symphony gave the Japanese première of Shostakovich's Tenth in 1954, less than a year after its first performance in Leningrad. Jonathan Nott’s approach could scarcely have been more different.
An evening at the Wigmore Hall with the fabulous Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and fortepiano star Kristian Bezuidenhout in the keyboard concertos of CPE Bach and Mozart. What could go wrong?
The element of surprise in this seemingly standard Late Night Prom of Handel, Muffat, Bach and Purcell by the period-instrument orchestra Academy of Ancient Music was Leopold Stokowski.
In the penultimate Proms Chamber Music lunchtime concert, the Armida Quartett and viola player Lise Berthaud packed a intense but well-balanced programme in an hour which was like having a perfect three-course lunch.