Find reviews | Concerts, Opera, Dance, Kids events, Talks or lectures | Ken Ward

Rare Bruckner psalm setting brought to light and given a stunning performance with Mass no. 3 by Munich Philharmonic Choir, Philharmonia Festive at Ebrach's 25th jubilee concert.

Andrei Licaret at Bad Kissingen gives a commanding performance of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, and Gerd Schaller inspires the Philharmonie Festiva to a great performance of Bruckner's 'Study Symphony'.

Gerd Schaller and the Philharmonie Festiva re-evaluate Bruckner's “Zero” in a first-rate performance, following a somewhat lacklustre Beethoven Violin Concerto from Ingolf Turban.

Segerstam elicits oustanding playing from the BBCSO in an immense Bruckner 8, preceded by the BBC Singers exquisite Bruckner motets.

Andris Nelsons' Birmingham Bruckner is a thing of beauty to follow Stephen Hough's masterly Schumann Piano Concerto.

Alice Coote and Elizabeth Watts soar gloriously from the emotional heart of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony in a powerful performance from the LPO directed by Andrés Orozco-Estrada.

A fine new edition of Mozart's Requiem recieves its UK première, overshadowed by a trenchant Sibelius Fourth from Opera North under Jac van Steen.

Gerd Schaller, the Munich Philharmonic Choir and Philharmonie Festiva present a successful revival of an almost forgotten Mass by Johann Herbeck, and Olga Pogorelova plays heavenly Mozart at the spa town of Bad Kissingen.

The Youth Orchestra of Upper Austria under Rémy Ballot play Bruckner's 8th with extended intensity at the monastery of St Florian. 

Fabio Luisi and the LSO, vindicate magnificently Bruckner's first thoughts for his Eighth Symphony, and with Lise de la Salle create a splendidly multi-dimensional Mozart.

Yordan Kamdzhalov's final concert as GMD Heidelberg presents Alina Pogostkina in a glowing performance of Vasks' Distant Light, and shines in Bruckner 9 with reconstructed finale.

Renaud Capuçon and the LPO fail to make the most of Schumann's Violin Concerto, but Saraste's fast, rhapsodic Bruckner made up in beauty of orchestral sound for an unconvincing overall interpretation.

Van Zweden steps in for an indisposed Nézet-Séguin, his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in a powerful but mainly extrovert performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony.

Nicholas Angelich's Mendelssohn Piano Concerto reaches places that Nézet-Séguin's and the LPO's Mahler Ninth at the Royal Festival Hall rarely touched. 

A grave and weighty “Jeunehomme” from Emanuel Ax, and after a Romantic first movement, Haitink and the Berlin Philharmonic power through Bruckner's Symphony no. 4 in E flat major.

Benjamin Beilman's radiant Mendelssohn preceded Skrowaczewski and the LPO making a magnificent case for Bruckner's third version of his Symphony no. 3 in D minor at the Souhthbank Centre, London.

A rare performance of Bruckner's Overture in G minor introduces luminous Wagner and lively Beethoven from the Hertford Bruckner Orchestra. 

English Touring Opera's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute launches in Hackney, balanced more towards fun than profundity, with some stunning coups de théâtre.

Julia Fischer and Daniel Müller-Schott demonstrate faultless command of Brahms' consumately crafted Double Concerto, which makes a telling contrast with Bruckner's wayward early Symphony no.2 in C minor in Jurowski's committed LPO performance.

Tunbridge Wells Symphony concert success with Aleksandar Djermanović's last minute Chopin and Bruckner's Romantic Symphony masterfully conducted by Neil Thomson.

St Aldhelm's Orchestra, conducted by Ian Lowes, gave a rare performance of Bruckner's Symphony no. 0, effectively capturing this early work's symphonic span.

At London's new venue Milton Court, Kensington Symphony Orchestra played a mixed Bruckner 3 and an excellent Prokofiev concerto with soloist Nikolai Demidenko.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem is one the most performed of his works, famously unfinished at the time of his death, but completed at the demand of his widow (money was, as ever, in desperately short supply) by his pupil Franz Xaver Süβmayr.

There are (at least) two moments in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2 where the music extends the language taken from Haydn and Mozart and reaches out into new worlds. Both were handled to great effect by tonight’s soloist, Christian Ihle Hadland.

Bruckner’s Sixth is one of his most genial symphonies and might be considered to inhabit a world not too distant from the symphonies of Schubert, Dvořák and even Beethoven’s Pastoral. Not only are its many melodies immediately appealing, but it is also, in the words of the composer, his “cheekiest” (“die Kechste”).

The most memorable thing about this concert for me was the sheer glory of the Philharmonia’s playing. Whether it was in the winning, sprightly Mozart overture, or in all the glinting colours of Peter Eötvös’ new work, or in the full and rich late-Romantic orchestral tones of the Bruckner, these musicians, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, were magnificent.

Concert reviews are of their nature very subjective and, indeed, sometimes it’s hard to believe that different reviewers were at the same concert. So it is always gratifying to be able to provide the reader with an objective fact: at over 90 minutes, this was probably the longest lasting performance of Bruckner’s third symphony ever performed – certainly longer than any recorded performance.

Despite the accolades heaped upon the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle’s performance and recording of this version of Bruckner’s 9th symphony with its unfinished finale, performances worldwide remain few and far between.

The Abbey at Ebrach in Germany has all the advantages and disadvantages one might expect of a large ecclesiastical building as a venue for a Bruckner performance and, as far the sound goes, they are summed up in one word: reverberation.

The conductor raised his baton to embark on the fourth movement – there was some slight disturbance in the hall. He lowered his hands and waited. He raised the baton again and waited. When silence was absolute he gave the sign for the timpanist to sound the pianissimo, misterioso drum roll that ushers in this extraordinary movement.

The city of Darmstadt is blessed with a theatre that sustains a wide-ranging repertoire of first-class drama, opera and concerts, and the cross-fertilisation of music and theatre was apparent this evening: the concert commenced with a moment of splendid theatricality.

This concert, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, opened with that composer’s most influential phrase – the beginning of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde wherein the Tristan chord, which is reputed to have had such an unsettling effect on the harmonic language of all who followed, first stole upon the ears of 19th-century music lovers.

Amateur orchestras attract loyal audiences who turn up whatever is on the programme, and this may account for the fact that both Adrian Brown of the Bromley Symphony Orchestra last week, and Philip Hesketh tonight, felt the need to provide an introductory talk. Indeed, the first half of this concert consisted of an extended introduction to Bruckner and his Eighth Symphony.

Conductor Adrian Brown began his introduction telling us of how he’d loved Bruckner since he was a teenager, and then went on to say that Bruckner’s symphonies were like “cathedrals in sound”. I confess to closing my eyes in jaded exasperation.

Before this chamber performance of Bruckner’s Second Symphony, Trevor Pinnock gave a short introductory talk, pointing out that, before the days of ubiquitous recording, music was always heard live, and chamber arrangements were an important aspect of disseminating music.

The refurbishment of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, has been completed and it is now, once again, a glorious concert venue, well suited to the performance of a Bruckner symphony. The audience sit in the nave, the orchestra in front of them with the substantial stone organ screen that separates the nave from the chancel as an evocative backdrop.

The citizens of Birmingham were queueing up at the door when I arrived in good time for this concert, and the hall was nearly full when the concert began. All seats were unreserved and at the same price wherever you sat – an arrangement that has always appealed to me.

The London Symphony Orchestra presented the themes of the first movement of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto very nicely indeed, benefiting from the clarity, moderation and wisdom with which a lifetime of experience has endowed their conductor for this concert.

The finale of Haydn’s Symphony no. 90 is a dramatic, exciting C major event, with trumpets and drums, much to stir the heart and get the toes tapping. Everything’s bustling along very nicely towards its inevitable triumphant conclusion, which duly arrives.

Muffled up in a heavy coat, scarf and gloves, your intrepid reviewer travelled through the wild heart of the East End of London, from Whitechapel on the Overground, under the Thames to the equally rough and grubby realms of south-east London, to Brockley, making his way up the hill in the wintry darkness to St Peter’s Church.

In 1930 a seven-year-old boy was walking along a street in the misty city of Lwów (then Poland, now Ukraine) when he heard music coming from an open window: He was transfixed: “I was in a trance. I was in heaven – the world didn’t exist for me.” So shattered was he by the experience that he fell ill with a fever.

Mozart finished the Piano Concerto no. 27 in January 1791, the year he was to die. His music had fallen out of favour in Vienna, he was very short of funds, and he and his wife had been repeatedly unwell over the previous years.

When you begin to get to know the symphonies of Anton Bruckner it’s not long before you come up against “the Bruckner problem”: the fact that there are multiple versions of many of the works, some of which originate from the composer himself who went through periods of revision-mania, while others are the results of collaborations with his supporters, and some were done without the composer’s invo

The opening theme of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 is announced in the depths of the orchestra; with the precise rhythm of the main theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th and something of the character of the Siegfried motive from Götterdämmerung, it contains energy and heroic aspiration, but also a harmonic instability that gives it a searching and unsettled quality.

The two masses in this intriguing and very enjoyable programme made a thought-provoking contrast. Stravinsky was anxious that his mass be cold – indeed, as the bass singer Simon Scott Plummer’s useful programme notes told us, he wanted the music ‘very cold, absolutely cold, that will appeal directly to the spirit.

The brass, winds and percussion of the LSO opened the concert with a powerful, dramatic rendition of Purcell’s Music for the funeral of Queen Mary, arranged to sharpen the effect for modern ears by Steven Stucky.

Bruckner moved to Vienna in 1868 to take up the post of Professor of Organ, Harmony and Counterpoint at the Conservatory. Seven years later, in 1875, he was still ruing the day he had left his local city of Linz: only one symphony had been performed, his income was meagre and he envisaged going to debtors’ jail, “where I can descant to my heart’s content on my folly in ever coming to Vienna.

Extraordinary things happen in St Barnabas Church, Ealing. On a couple of occasions, 32 pianists have played 32 Beethoven piano sonatas over one weekend, and every so often the building is host to Ealing Symphony Orchestra, who dare to embark on programmes that feature works you just will not hear anyone else perform – first public performances of Ives’ Orchestral Set no.

After performing the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies of Anton Bruckner on Monday and Tuesday, Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin took no rest, but travelled to Paris to perform the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies in the Salle Pleyel to keep themselves occupied on Wednesday and Thursday.

Of Bruckner’s mighty symphonies, the Eighth is the mightiest. Dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria (although at one stage the repeatedly lovelorn 63 year old composer sought to dedicate it to a young girl he met at the opera, Marie Demar) Bruckner’s hints at its programme speak of such things as ‘the annunciation of death’ in the first movement and the grand meeting of the three emperor