Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | festival

The BBC Symphony Orchestra opens its season at the Barbican on top form in Mahler's last completed symphony. 

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Thomas Søndergård open their season, continuing their Mahler cycle, with the Seventh Symphony.

Opening Dance Umbrella's Festival 2025 at Sadler's Wells East, Andrea Peña and Artists’ Bogotá examines perceptions of death and rebirth and how our ancestral stories echo in today's urban world.

Conductor Semyon Bychkov and soloist Seong-Jin Cho offer an underwhelming introduction to the new season at the Rudolfinum. 

With a programme spanning from Pagh-Paan, Ravel and Messiean to Sibelius, the Korean orchestra showcases its mastery at the Philharmonie Berlin. 

A perfect triple bill became a less perfect quadruple bill. Brilliant performances by dancers from Gibney, kNoname Artist, Paris Opera étoiles rarely seen in New York and – a rarity these days – live musicians. 

Venturing into Gershwin, Rudolf Buchbinder joins an Orchestre National de France programme at the George Enescu International Festival marked by surprises. 

Prokofiev opens Seong-Jin Cho’s LSO Artist Portrait series, sandwiches between symphonies by Shostakovich and Beethoven. 

At this year's Musikfest Berlin, Kirill Petrenko conducts his Berliner Philharmoniker in a devilishly intricate programme. 

Visual symbolism and musical ambition in a production at the George Enescu International Festival. 

In the intimate splendour of the Margravial Opera House, Bayreuth Baroque revives Cavalli’s Pompeo Magno with a riot of colors, eight masked countertenors and a Tiepolo-like air of playful chaos.

Daniele Gatti and Kirill Gerstein offer fresh, invigorating takes on two warhorses with the Staatskapelle Dresden. 

The Giocoso’s Enescu and Il Giardino Armonico’s Beethoven bookend an exhilarating day of rarities and classics.

John Wilson brings his Sinfonia of London to the BBC Proms to crown the Ravel 150 celebrations with a glowing performance of his hedonistic symphonie chorégraphique.

At the George Enescu International Festival, a pair of new shows crossing genres and reinventing the classics, with mostly enlightening results.

Bringing the Philharmonia is the most ambitious thing the Lammermuir Festival has ever done, yet it felt like a natural next step for a festival that's growing in stature.

Iván Fischer's reworking of his 2017 production of Don Giovanni is musically capable, but dramatically unconvincing.

Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic give a masterclass in virtuosic elegance in Mozrt, but lack edge and passion in Tchaikovsky's Pathétique. 

Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic enthral at the BBC Proms with magical accounts of Bruckner's last symphony and extracts from Berg's Lulu Suite.

Jonathan Watkins’ A Single Man is a compelling piece of dance theatre and a magnificent vehicle for the leading characters to shine as dancers and actors.

At the George Enescu International Festival, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony plays music without consolation by Sibelius and Shostakovich. 

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s BBC Proms matinee proves an ideal opportunity to demonstrate their strengths in a programme of Respighi, Milhaud and Vaughan Williams. 

In their Lammermuir Festival debut, I Fagiolini strike spiritual and musical gold with the Monteverdi Vespers... at least in the first half.

Bucharest’s temples of culture present rites of closure by Mozart, Kurtág and Bruckner… and a fleeting glimpse of Nirvana.

Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra leave a lot to the imagination in a fiery treatment of two signature Dvořák works.

Jonathon Heyward steps in to conduct Chineke! in two UK premieres and Shostakovich's rip-roaring Tenth Symphony. 

Born to a Basque mother just ten miles from the Spanish border, Ravel excelled at authentic Spanish flavours as heard in this splendid festival concert by the Orchestre National de France.

Don Quixote provides the inspiration for songs by Ravel and Ibert, the high point of a bitty programme in contrast to an early evening recital which followed the perfect trajectory.

At the Festival Ravel, Bertrand Chamayou, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Hyunji Kim perform all the solo piano works at the Église Saint-Vincent, a stone’s throw from the house where Ravel was born.

At the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Fazıl Say concluded his residency with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic with an evening of jazz, Ravel and his own symphony, capturing the restless energy of an Istanbul-style metropolis.

David Pountney's vernacular translation and Ruth Knight's vivid staging lent a thrilling immediacy to Shostakovich's chilling opera.

An eclectic programme including evocative Sámi joiks from and powerful Shostakovich performed from memory by the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.

Ryan Bancroft’s LSO programme, inherited from Simon Rattle, mixes attractive English folksong-inspired pieces with more challenging, late 20th-century works.

Despite the disruption, the musicians of the MSO under Chief Conductor Jaime Martín continue their interesting programme of Sutherland, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky.

Between gigs at Wembley as Coldplay’s support act, the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra brings its distinctive brand of infectious music-making to the Southbank.

Kullervo opens the 26th Sibelius Festival in Lahti, but the new edition brings a big change: not all the music will is by Sibelius! 

Under Jaime Martín, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra showcase Indigenous music through William Barton’s didgeridoo alongside Elgar and Mussorgsky, creating a visually and sonically vivid, if uneven, evening.

Marie Jacquot makes her BBC Proms debut with great performances of Bizet, Saint-Saëns and Augusta Holmès, while Inmo Yang dazzles in Sarasate. 

Liv Redpath and Bertrand Chamayou shine at the Lucerne Festival in this celebration of Pierre Boulez's legacy. 

The German violinist gives us plenty of Czech brio in Dvořák; conductor and orchestra display many good qualities but fail to thrill.

Rouvali and the Philharmonia dazzle with sunlit Tchaikovsky, intense Shostakovich and Say’s imaginative textures, while Gabetta’s physical, lyrical cello brings immediacy to an evening of virtuosity, warmth and playful energy.

The season-ending performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony loses its intended conductor but remains enjoyable, if somewhat under-rehearsed. 

The festival’s closing concert brings drama from the RSNO and conductor Thomas Søndergård, but Christopher Maltman's Elijah brings the presence of greatness. 

Janine Jansen joins the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for Prokofiev in a brilliantly conceived programme ending with Bartók’s ebullient Concerto for Orchestra. 

The guest conductor pairs Holst's perennial crowd pleaser with Poulenc's Gloria, a work deeply associated with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In the first of two concerts at the BBC Proms, Klaus Mäkelä and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra give a thrilling performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony and a glowing exposition of Berio's Rendering. 

In Antwerp, the Huelgas Ensemble pull off an idiosyncratic and persuasive dive into Léonin, Pérotin and the world of Notre Dame polyphony.

An evening focused on the separation of humanity from the natural world and the destruction of that world, either because of ignorance, greed or just not caring.

Karina Canellakis brings a riot of Technicolor to the Edinburgh International Festival, but countertenor Hugh Cutting threatens to steal the show in Chichester Psalms.