Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Respighi

A sublime performance of Berlioz' La Mort de Cléopâtre by Joyce DiDonato, Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra overshadows the rest of a Rome-inspired concert at Carnegie Hall.

It's a game of two halves in Barcelona from Kazushi Ono and the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya.

Roberto Plano offered a colorfully diverse selection of solo pieces before joining forces with Cleveland Orchestra members for Brahms' Piano Quintet.

Two colourful, atmospheric and evocative pieces by Respighi contrasted with a Bach Piano Concerto with Eric Le Sage.

Marianne Crebassa and Esa-Pekka Salonen take the audience on a dazzling musical journey from Rome to Asia.

The tone was set for a shrewdly programmed hour of contrasts.

Nézet-Séguin leads Philadelphians and Joyce DiDonato in superb performances of Wagner, Bates, Chausson and Respighi.

Conductor Alpesh Chauhan and pianist Pavel Kolesnikov returned to Birmingham with an Italian themed programme. Could they build on the success of their previous performances with the CBSO?   

The BBC Philharmonic open their season in Manchester with some exciting new ideas

Sir Antonio Pappano and his Santa Cecilia Orchestra display their collective strengths in first symphonies by Bernstein and Mahler.

The Rotterdam Philharmonic marked their centenary with two concerts starring mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. A bittersweet weekend, during which they also took leave of their beloved principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra was on tip-top form, with the buoyant Daniele Rustioni and mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital conjuring up a fresco of genuine Mediterranean delights.

L’Opéra de Lyon’s new production of Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco was an operatic pastiche with fairy tale fantasy and foxtrots thrown in for good measure.   

Carlo Rizzi conducts The Hallé in a programme of inventive and thrilling approaches to Resoighi, Rachmaninov and Rossini at Bridgewater Hall.

In the last week, the LPO has been on a journey through the seasons. Tonight, it was mists and mellow fruitfulness, courtesy of rarities by Respighi and Marx.

Vasks’ Viola Concerto receives its Scottish première with Maxim Rysanov and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as they explore music and nature in the Baltic, Rome and America.

After a nine-year absence, Martha Argerich returned to Carnegie Hall with stunning Prokofiev with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

For The Cleveland Orchestra’s gala concert, music director Franz Welser-Möst offered a crowd-pleasing program of works inspired by Italy.

Riccardo Chailly and the Filarmonica della Scala give a wonderful account of two of Respighi's travelogues; Leonidas Kavakos plays Brahms with refinement – perhaps too much so for the Albert Hall.

All roads lead to Rome. Last night however, the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia brought the Eternal City vividly to London.

In a program of vivid Italian work, violinist Elina Välhälä, performing Corigliano's violin concerto, seemed to transform into a formidable sprite.

Gerald Finley displayed a voice still in its prime in a rich and diverse recital at the Barbican, elegantly supported by Antonio Pappano on the piano.

Guest Laura Jackson leads the Atlanta Symphony in three light pieces and a masterwork, with soloist Avi Avital.

An elegant performance of Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony opened an oddly-proportioned concert.

The RCO marked the investiture of Daniele Gatti as its seventh chief conductor with a sampler programme featuring Mahler, opera, and an expansive, glittering version of Respighi’s Fountains of Rome.

Revisiting the music of her youth, Martina Janková keeps a vocal tradition alive and explores European expressions of national identity.

The Ravel G-Major piano concerto is in fact a mind-bogglingly virtuosic pianistic endeavor requiring fingers of steel and trills of satin.

A globetrotting programme from Dutoit and the RPO that whisked us from Rome's fountains to St Petersburg's Shrovetide Fair via Bohemia's woods and fields. 

Manfred Honeck led the CSO in two works of Respighi capped off with a memorable Tchaikovsky Sixth.

Dutoit leads the New York Phil, pianist Yuja Wang in a colorful program of Respighi's Roman Trilogy and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9.

Pappano and the LSO provide magnificent entertainment with Respighi's Roman trilogy; Lise de la Salle gives pin-sharp precision in Rachmaninov's take on Paganini.

An all-Italian programme conducted by Enrique Mazzola encompasses the theatrical worlds of opera, film and ballet as well as purely musical tone-painting.

Cinematic sweep was on full display as JoAnn Falletta and the VSO/VSC thrilled with vital interpretations of three early 20th Century works by Bax, Respighi and Walton.

At the Eurasia Festival, the RAI Orchestra provide a thoroughly memorable evening of Italian music spanning a century.

Overall, Bellincampi made a strong argument for some neglected musical treasures and one looks forward to see how his collaboration with the Auckland Philharmonia develops.

Charles Dutoit displays his expertise in Berlioz and Respighi in a fine evening with the Sydney Symphony. 

Elegance and wit are on ample display in Pär Isberg's new Pinocchio for Hong Kong Ballet, with a score by Respighi, arranged by maestro Benjamin Pope and vibrantly delivered by the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. 

A recent concert by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis, piano, saw the Tonhalle almost having to hold people back at the gates.

John Adams conducted the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in works ranging from the frothy to the very serious, including his latest composition, Scheherazade.2.

Opportunities missed to exploit dynamic contrast in Xian Zhang's Roman Festivals with the Hong Kong Philharmonic.

“More facility than substance”: perhaps an apt description of the music of Ottorino Respighi.  Certainly on the evidence of last night’s concert, featuring the three ever popular Roman tone poems, one could have been left with that impression, but we had a thoroughly good time in the process.

John Wilson directs the National Youth Orchestra directs the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in a staggering performance of unbridled enthusiasm.

Peter Oundjian and the RSNO star in a celebration of orchestration, with guest Steven Osborne. 

Brett Dean's The Annunciation offers a Moderninst take on Christmas traditions. Curiosities from Respighi and Strauss complete an eccentric programme.

Charles Dutoit and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra journey on a Roman holiday, taking in the pines, fountains and festivals of the Eternal City. 

For once, the musical menu was a good deal more sultry than the temperatures in the Royal Albert Hall as the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic made a notable debut in a programme full of what Rudyard Kipling may well have described as “more-than-oriental splendour”.

Violinist James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on breathtaking form in an immense, virtuosic programme of Elgar, Respighi, Britten and Berlioz.

One of the pleasures of live music-making is seeing as well as hearing: one gets a sense of a performance as a multi-layered communicative act rather than solely as a sequence of beautiful sounds. In Saturday evening’s ACO concert with the extraordinary cellist Giovanni Sollima as soloist, the visual dimension contributed more than usual to the effect of the whole. 

Joanna MacGregor's 'Exotic Birds', in an imaginatively programmed Auckland Philharmonia concert, gets our reviewer all aflutter.

The Klassische Philharmonie Bonn performs Respighi, Beethoven and Mozart in Berlin's Konzerthaus.