Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Esa-Pekka Salonen

In a fin de siècle programme, Salonen and the Philharmonia demonstrated visceral excitement, and found ways to reinvent. 

This was a superbly assured performance in which Esa-Pekka Salonen marshalled his forces with a clear-sighted vision to carve out an account brimming with intensity, energy and commitment.

Dame Mitsuko Uchida again brought out her outstanding musicality and special charisma in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto.

A night to remember in Antwerp as Salonen and the Philharmonia demonstrated once again that, in the right hands, familiar repertory can still prove compelling and even surprising.

In her newest work, Metacosmos, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir proves again to be an artist of deep originality.

Salonen's tribute to Gehry, Yasuhisa Toyota and Deborah Borda seems to come more from his brilliant visual palette than his emotional heart. 

Esa-Pekka Salonen's return to Walt Disney concert hall highlighted his gifts as composer and conductor alike and underscored how an orchestra can sound genuinely 21st century.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s spotlight on Salonen the creative artist also imparted thoughts on our interconnected world. 

The celebrations 100 years of Finnish Independence move to the Royal Festival Hall, with an all-Sibelius programme and Esa-Pekka Salonen: the highlight is soloist Vilde Frang's playing of the Violin Concerto.

Esa-Pekka Salonen brought maturity and experience to a searing account of Mahler’s last completed symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra on its best form.

What you will find in Mahler's Third is music which resonates with every part of your life. Esa-Pekka Salonen proves an indefatigable and sure-footed guide.

In its opening concert of the season, the Philharmonia gave two of Sibelius' symphonies with two modern pieces by a pair of Iceland's finest young composers, which made for rewarding listening.

A true audiovisual experience, Anders Hillborg's Aeterna, a collaboration with two Swedish film-makers, results in a compelling portrait of the fragility that underlies our relationship with our planet.

Peter Sellars's much-travelled staging of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex provided a powerful opening for the 15th Baltic Sea Festival under the festival's artistic director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Staggering performances from Esa-Pekka Salonen and Philharmonia in John Adams’s sonic journey, Naïve and Sentimental Music, and Marianne Crebassa exquisite in Ravel’s Shéhérazade.

At Carnegie Hall the MET orchestra proves that, temporarily rudderless, it's still a top ensemble

Salonen has an obvious vision on how to conduct Mahler, relentelsly driving the orchestra in the direction he wants.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts an emotionally exhausting evening of Mahler and Bartók

A typically adventurous programme "curated" by Esa-Pekka Salonen paired Boulez with Debussy. 

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the US première of Tansy Davies' Forest, a work intended to evoke a Romantic sensation of mystery and nature.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto received a successful world première with Yo-Yo Ma and the Chicago Symphony, the composer conducting, richly complemented by works of Adams and Stravinsky.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s colorful program included the first Chicago performance of John Adams’ Scheherazade.2 with dedicatee Leila Josefowicz, along with works of Debussy and Stravinsky.

Clear playing from Pierre-Laurent Aimard in the Emperor Concerto and a sense of the dramatic in Also sprach Zarathustra brought life to old warhorses, while a new concerto from Tansy Davies made waves.

Clarinetist Kari Kriikku sauntered through the aisles of both the orchestra and audience, spinning around in two complete 360s and surely dousing the flabbergasted listeners in the floor seating with saliva.

Listening to Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra brought back memories of his halcyon days with the Los Angeles Philharmonic when he summoned up Sibelius with a golden magician's wand, and Beethoven with a lapidarian's curiosity. 

Searing performances from a mixed cast, superb choir and orchestra; all brilliantly conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

As Esa-Pekka Salonen resumes his Stravinsky series, he turns his attention to three underperformed works based on key figures of Greek mythology: Orpheus, Apollo and Persephone.

Esa-Pekka Salonen and Yuja Wang at the Baltic Sea Festival.

Fine Dutilleux celebration sandwiched between brilliant Schoenberg and patchy Mahler.

A wedding feast, a man in drag and an outwitted fox were unlikely accomplices in the second concert in the Philharmonia's series Stravinsky: Myths and Rituals. 

In the first concert of their exciting series Stravinsky: Myth and Ritual celebrating the varied musical inspirations of this most iconic figure of 20th-century composers, the focus was on Rituals. 

The late director Patrice Chereau's last work, Elektra, was brilliantly realized at the Met, with special credit to conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and soprano Nina Stemme.

The combination of Esa-Pekka Salonen and the New York Philharmonic, in the first of three evenings devoted solely to Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie proved riveting and exhilarating. 

As part of the New York Philharmonic’s CONTACT new music series at National Sawdust in Brooklyn, Esa-Pekka Salonen drew connections among Olivier Messiaen, two of his students (Pierre Boulez and George Benjamin) and one outlier (Oliver Knussen).

An eclectic program under Esa-Pekka Salonen's baton, highlighted by Lutosławski’s watershed Third Symphony and a Shostakovich concerto with Yo-Yo Ma.

Great opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande as part of the City of Light, a retrospective that examines works seen in Paris during the first half of the 20th century. 

Powerful Romeo and Juliet and triumphant Scriabin from the Philharmonia and Salonen, with moments of excitement in Prokofiev from Lang Lang.

Juha Hemánus' terrific semi-staging of Peer Gynt, using Grieg's incidental music, is the impresses at the Royal Festival Hall. 

A daring, fascinating pairing of two modern operas by Krzysztof Warlikowski in Paris. 

Difficult to imagine anyone finding fault with Arabella Steinbacher's Brahms concerto – or finding a similar consensus about Salonen's Sibelius Five.

Fervent flag-waving is usually reserved for the Last Night of the Proms, so what was going on in this Philharmonia concert? The Arena was awash with a sea of red flags, the chorus – and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen – were decked out in T-shirts bearing portraits of Lenin or Stalin.

The Philharmonia Orchestra's Paris: City of Light 1900–1950 reaches its climax, where Debussy and Messiaen combine for a radiant, dazzling programme. Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard crowns an emotionally intense Turangalîla-symphonie.

This final concert of a three-week festival of French music featured works by Debussy, Ravel, and Messiaen. In a clever bit of programming, the number of performers on stage grew from one flautist on the first piece to a symphony of over 100 for the last.

Whimsical program of French symphonic and operatic works opens the CSO's "French Reveries and Passions" festival.

City of Light: Paris 1900-1950 was the stimulus behind an evening of impressive performances of inspirational music by Ravel and Stravinsky.

The Philharmonia's City of Light season goes from strength to strength with an outstanding performance of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges and Dutilleux's Correspondances.

With the Philharmonia on top form, a superlative cast and clever touches of direction, this was a truly stunning concert performance of Debussy's only opera.

Esa-Pekka Salonen infused his rendition of L'Oiseau de feu with air rather than fire. I’ve come to expect passion and urgency from performances of the complete ballet, but his splintering silences and startling dynamic shifts lent a unique tone to the work.

Esa-Pekka Salonen opened the Philharmonia season with a taut, driven Berlioz Requiem, epic, if somewhat constrained by the scale of the Festival Hall.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia in a fine account of Mahler's mighty “Symphony of a Thousand”, culminating in a dramatic realisation of Faust's redemption.