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

Richard Egarr was able to put together a performance that – full of energy and dynamism – succeeded in bringing forward with great transparency, restraint and delicacy this score’s wonderful musical tapestry. 

Poor diction and lack of heft from some principals mar the composer's last great oratorio. 

Ares, Butt, Egarr and Foster play brilliantly, but they're at their best when there's no orchestra.

Lloyd-Evans' new production of Mozart's classic might be traditional, but there's no lack of astuteness in his direction of his characters. Problems in the pit hinder an otherwise strong musical performance.

This concert of Purcell and Handel was as theatrically engaging as anything you'd find in an opera house.

A semi-staged Dido from the Academy of Ancient Music and the speculative funeral music for a queen.

Richard Egarr conducts a pair of Haydn's London Symphonies and turns soloist in a piano concerto by Dussek.

Superlative musicianship and extravagant detailing from the force-of-nature that is Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music 

Egarr, Bezuidenhout and the MSO are the perfect match in this celebration of Mozart's wit and genius, delivering historically grounded and exhilarating interpretations of treasured favourites.

Eschewing conventions throughout, Daisy Evans' production of The Fairy Queen walks boldly out of the woods into an exciting future for opera staging.

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.

The Academy of Ancient Music gave a finely honed account of Handel's unusual "little opera", written for the Earl of Carnavon's household musicians: a sweet pastoral offering never yet out of the repertoire. 

Imaginative keyboard leadership from visiting director Richard Egarr a highlight in his programme with the Australian Chamber Orchestra's 'Golden Age' tour.

Superlative vocal and instrumental soloists, led by Michael Schade as a vividly intense Evangelist, impress in Bach’s St John Passion at the Concertgebouw.

A disappointing performance of Bach's four Orchestra; Suites from the Academy of Ancient Music, on tour to the United States. 

Richard Egarr leads the Academy of Ancient Music and a stellar team of vocal soloists in an unapologetically lush and dramatic St Matthew Passion.

Billed as a “concert hall staging”, the Academy of Ancient Music’s season-opening performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was brilliantly staged at the Barbican by the director Orpha Phelan and designer Caroline Hughes – as close as one could get to a full production in a concert hall without a pit.

Most striking about the Academy of Ancient Music’s playing is its neatness: every phrase is so precisely shaped, so clean. Presumably this is down to impeccable preparation as well as an intrinsic feeling in the group for how Baroque music should sound. But their playing also sounds fresh, new, surprising.

Endeavouring to travel lightly through the world, I tend not to collect programme notes. However, such was the quality of Jo Kirkbride’s notes for this SCO Britten centenary celebration that scanning them for e-posterity is tempting. They prompted a consideration of the whole idea of programming.

Today it is thought that J.S. Bach’s chamber and ensemble music, including the four Orchestral Suites, date from his time in Leipzig from the 1720s onwards. When all the Orchestral Suites (BWV1066–1069) are put together, their inventive and varied nature is evident. The suites make great use of all ensemble instruments and incorporate a range of structures, as well as internal forms and dances.

The Academy of Ancient Music has been critically acclaimed in pursuing Baroque composers’ original stylistic intent, and this gave tonight’s concert the prospect of a faithful look into the period of 1650-1750. Here are a few of my highlights from this varied Robeco Summer Concert in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

How’s this for an original way of displaying one’s celebratory Union Flag? Strapped to the top of one’s contrabassoon! Apart from the absence of the National Anthem and horseracing, this concert gave us the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend in a nutshell, encompassing the solemnity and sovereignty of all four of Handel’s Coronation Anthems, the exuberance of the Music for the Royal Firework

How do you like your Baroque? Extreme – all gut strings and not a chin-rest in sight? Or mid-twentieth century – molto vibrato with saxophone obbligato? There is, of course, a half way house, and in last night’s packed Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, the SCO steered firmly towards it, producing several agreeable surprises along the way.

We know what to expect from a virtuoso showpiece like Paganini's second Violin Concerto: a mighty contest between man and music, for us to be on the edge of our seats marvelling at how the violinist dazzles us with notes on the edge of possibility and grand gestures, with a mild frisson of "will he really manage it?"There is another way, demonstrated by the young Japanese-American violinist Shunsk

In sporting parlance, the "dream-team" of countertenor Iestyn Davies and Richard Egarr at the harpsichord came together last night for a Wigmore Hall concert held to mark the 10 years directorship of John Gilhooly, and was the perfect representation of his decade at the helm: singer + harpsichord, immaculate programming, consummate musicianship, scholarship, unheard-of treasures, blended with a da

Richard Egarr se puso al frente de la OSG para dar vida a un programa con los grandes nombres del clasicismo y primer romanticismo, recuperando la autenticidad y las emociones de unas músicas a las que imprimió una potente individualidad.

Una soberbia interpretación que hizo justicia a la utopía humanista del sexagenario Franz Joseph Haydn

Steven Isserlis bescherte dem Tonhalle-Publikum musikalische Momente unsäglichen Glücks.