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

At the Metropolitan Opera, Innocence proves a gripping and perhaps divisive piece which feels real because it is a reflection of our reality, with no realistic hope of finding peace. 

Pierre Audi is remembered in words and music as the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence receives $1m – the richest prize in classical music – at Stockholm’s Konserthuset. 

Julia Perry and two Europeans exiled to America feature in Susanna Mälkki's London Symphony Orchestra programme, featuring Leila Josefowicz as soloist in Stravinsky's Violin Concerto. 

Exceptional singing enlivens a flawed production, which takes liberties with the tone and tenor of Beethoven's sole opera.

In addition to the New York premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Duende: The Dark Notes, the evening is marked by an intriguing coupling of Strauss' Metamorphosen and Ravel's La Valse. 

An unusual double bill opens the new season at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, with Susanna Mälkki offering a moving take on Saariaho and Mahler.

The best moments come at either end of this underwhelming LA Phil concert.  

The LSO celebrate the breadth and vividness of orchestral colour, while Kirill Gerstein’s Ravel is a shade too reverential.

The summer festival closes with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra playing Tippett and Beethoven. 

The Boston Symphony Orchestra meet the virtuosic demands of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra with impressive ease; Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 9 is played with skill and accuracy by Seong-Jin Cho.

Kaija Saariaho's opera – staged by Simon Stone and the hit of the 2021 Aix-en-Provence Festival – makes its UK debut.

Felipe Lara Double Concerto for flute and double bass receives its New York premiere. 

Jonathan Miller's modish production returns to The Metropolitan Opera with three leads who are absolutely right. 

Mälkki's performance had all the trappings and the appearance of an informal audition for the Philharmonic's top musical position.

The concert served as a formal introduction to Philippe Tondre, who became the orchestra's principal oboe during the pandemic.

The traditional end of year performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony took on extra significance in this, his 250th anniversary year. 

Susanna Mälkki, relying on a group of capable instrumentalists, brought out the merits of Strauss's opus.

Altogether it was the sort of music Gerard Hoffnung might have composed if he had ever held a serious music festival.

Guest conductor Susanna Mälkki also showed her mettle in a fully realized performance of Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony.

The US premiere of Dieter Ammann's Piano Concerto gets a great reception in Boston from Andreas Haefliger and conductor Susanna Mälkki. 

Listening to Grisey's Quatre Chants two decades after its composition, it is clear that he was on a threshold into a new approach to dramatic vocal music.

Mälkki triumphs in the subtleties of Saariaho, stumbles in the ecstasies of Messiaen. 

Susanna Mälkki’s choppy, uneven Mahler 5, preceded by a Steve Reich world première. 

Despite an impressive Elgar concerto with Müller-Schott, it was in the Sibelius symphony that Mälkki fell short. 

When Robert DeMaine fell ill, LA Phil got creative by rotating the soloist duties in Zimmermann’s Cello Concerto. 

Baiba Skride has an incredible way of naturally engaging the listener’s emotions while transcending with ease the most challenging demands of the score.

The music of Sibelius and Mahler may seem worlds apart, but this concert by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, celebrating Finland's centenary, proved that opposites can attract.

Susanna Mälkki was guest conductor for The Cleveland Orchestra’s Summers@Severance concert, which also included Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony.

A new score by Melinda Wagner, concertante pieces for saxophone and orchestra with Branford Marsalis, and works of Bizet and Debussy comprised Susanna Mälkki’s CSO program, intriguing in its eclecticism.

Jumping in to cover for Valery Gergiev,  Susanna Mälkki made a promising debut with the LSO, offering a commendable, if flawed, Also sprach Zarathustra.

Conductor Susanna Mälkki, in her Met Opera debut, led the Met Opera Orchestra in a limber performance of Ms Saariaho's gorgeous music, the first woman-authored score to be heard at the Met in 113 years.

The Berliner Philharmoniker’s Academy is the future of this city’s most famous orchestra. Established 40 years ago by Herbert von Karajan, a third of current Berliner Philharmoniker members are Academy graduates.

Susanna Mälkki had another memorable outing with the CSO in coloristic works of Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov along with a Bartók violin concerto commanded by Gil Shaham.

Exquisite Boulez and Francesconi from Mälkki and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, before the conductor pushed the ensemble to its limits in The Planets.

The program included Bartók's third Piano Concerto and Stravinsky's Pétrouchka, with Sibelius' Oceanides rounding out a program that combined intellect with theatricality.

Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland is performed by the Los Angeles Philarharmonic, conducted by Susanna Mälkki. This is no Disney movie! 

Susanna Mälkki and the RSNO offer the best company on Mussorgsky's virtual visual gallery adventure, while Jack Liebeck shines in Prokofiev. 

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These wise words have fortunately not fallen on deaf ears at the Opéra de Paris, who have brought back their production of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and designed by Małgorzata Szczęśniak, first presented in Paris back in 2007.

My last encounter with conductor Susanna Mälkki was her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic two and a half years ago. I was impressed with her crisp style of conducting that delivered near-seismic impact in Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Susanna Mälkki, current Musical Director of the trail-blazing new music specialists Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg in a concert showcasing two French impressionists’ love affair with Spain, Brice Pauset’s fascination with the symphony orchestra’s timbral spectrum, and Alexander Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.

As I write this, I have just realised that someone in a neighbouring flat is listening to some rather loud jazz, a man is shouting outside, probably at the car alarm that has just gone off, and there is a bee buzzing around my room.

Ein Ehepaar treu über 20 Jahre Trennung: Andrea Breth und Susanne Mälkki machen aus dem antiken Pénélope-Stoff ein bewegendes modernes Märchen.

An der Bayerischen Staatsoper brilliert ein hochkarätiges Mozart-Ensemble in einem so enttäuschenden, wie trostlosem Regiekonzept.

La production de 2008 donne lieu à une belle reprise sous la direction impeccable de Susanna Mälkki, avec une distribution dominée par Ben Bliss dans le rôle de Tom Rakewell.

La direction de la cheffe finlandaise apporte des notes florales à l'œuvre de Mahler, dessinant les mille et un détails d'un jardin japonisant.

Créée en 2016, la mise en scène de l'opéra de Debussy par Katie Mitchell a fait l'objet de plusieurs adaptations qui apportent cependant leur lot d'interrogations et de doutes.

La production du metteur en scène polonais est de retour à Bastille et on a bien du mal à lui trouver des défauts, d'autant que la direction musicale de Susanna Mälkki est au diapason.

L'orchestre et la cheffe se distinguent dans une version de concert où la distribution n'a pas été à la hauteur de l'événement.