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

Robert and Clara were not the only two-composer family. So were Alma and Gustav. The Nash Ensemble's latest programme highlights Beethoven and the Romantics.

A memorable evening of superb music-making at the Royal Festival Hall, illuminating two well-known Vaughan Williams scores and shining a light on a seldom performed rarity.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth were heaven-storming in Prom 33, offering celestial visions from Strauss and Holst.

The baritone explores the extremes of youthful emotion in a varied programme of song with pianist Paul Cibis in the Voices Unwrapped season.

Memorable performances of Vaughan Williams' darkest and brightest symphonies at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester.

The constituent parts made up a contrasting and stimulating whole: works by Lili Boulanger, Messiaen and Brahms, united by biblical inspiration. Edward Gardner marshalled the collective London Philharmonic forces.

Does opera have room for film? And live video? Multiple screens and advertorials? And allusions to onscreen identity and cyber-immortality?

In a rather mixed and unconventional programme, Roderick Williams and Amarins Wierdsman provide the highlights of a programme of variable success in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall.

 It is rare for the LSO to take a literal and metaphorical back seat at one of their own concerts, but they supplied every instrumental need in Haydn's joyous oratorio. 

The LPO and London Philharmonic Choir are on outstanding form for a new major choral work to tell the Christmas story.

Its theme of the passing of everything from cherry blossom to opera houses made this a programme for the artistic perils of our time. 

Handel’s Italian cantata Apollo and Daphne is enjoying a Covid wave, perfect as it is for socially-distanced singing.

A deep-dive into the world of 14th-century Persian poet, Hafez, and his influence on song across the centuries. 

Anthony Minghella's classic production of Madam Butterfly makes a welcome return with a sensational role debut by Natalya Romaniw as Cio-Cio-San.

In his 2016 opera Blank Out, Dutch composer Michel van der Aa has managed to create a new kind of operatic ‘reality’ that resonates powerfully with today’s Zeitgeist. Highly recommended.

Challenging and vivid Bach in the first UK showing of Peter Sellars' staging of Bach's great liturgical masterpiece.

A conductorless performance of Handel's masterpiece lights up the Barbican.

The music’s explosions of volume have an open-throated magnificence.

A brooding and melancholy presentation of Bach’s masterpiece from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mark Padmore. 

A series of ill-advised staging choices leads to a disappointingly drab performance of Monteverdi's Homeric epic.

Hadelich dazzles, but Oundjian's Brahms is bland. 

Suffering, forgiveness, and natural brass in a brand new dramatic oratorio

In Thomas Guthrie’s revival of Sir David McVicar’s sober 2003 production of Mozart’s Singspiel, it was the pantomime elements of the show which registered strongly.

At the opera’s great climaxes Suffolk’s famous wood-and-brick building could barely contain it.

This Peter Grimes was a tale of two talents: the conductor and the star.

A pleasant afternoon's entertainment with grand sweeps and some beautiful singing by Roderick Williams.

An excellent performance of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s The Last Supper receiving its Scottish première, with Roderick Williams and Susan Bickley heading a luxury cast.

Opera North's production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, directed by Orpha Phelan, is a tense psychological drama which puts the emphasis on issues of democracy and attitudes to dictatorship. 

The legendary Kings College Choir, Cambridge, conducted by their very own Stephen Cleobury, was accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on period instruments at the Royal Albert Hall.

Michael Boyd's stylish new production is broadly traditional, apart from beyond-the-grave appearances by Lensky. 

Songs of the Sea, the opening concert of the Leeds Lieder Festival, leaves the audience in a happy and buoyant mood.

Soprano Miah Persson is the riveting protagonist in Michel van der Aa’s genre-crossing new opera, a fascinating revisiting of a tragic event.

Sir Mark Elder conducted the Hallé in a fine Shostakovich 15 following moving performances of Rachmaninov's The Isle of the Dead and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, expertly sung by Roderick Williams.

Not quite a song cycle and not quite a song recital, but the words and music format triumphed in the end at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

Vaughan Williams and Finzi given the Philharmonia treatment with John Wilson at the helm at the Royal Festival Hall.

Annemarie Kremer is a strong-willed, dramatically voiced Butterfly in Laurence Dale’s sensitive production.

Simon Rattle and the Vienna Philharmonic present Elgar's Dream of Gerontius as a well crafted gem of  the English choral tradition, but fall short of a dramatic outpouring of human emotion and religious fervour.

Stimulating sounds from the Academy of Ancient Music in late night Bach at the Proms. 

If Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, then Boris Godunov is about five Russian dolls' worth.

John Storgårds conducts the BBC Philharmonic in Carl Nielsen's First and Fourth (Inextinguishable) Symphonies with Roderick Williams singing Mahler's Wunderhorn songs in Manchester.

Grand Holst and the première of Mark Bowden's A Violence of Gifts, performed with bombastic gusto and colour.

St Andrews Voices was a perfect platform for Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside to exlore the fine line between madness and genuis in a compelling song recital.

Players from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment play Schubert's Octet in F major alongside Lieder from 1824 sung by Roderick Williams, Mary Bevan, Robert Murray and Rozanna Madylus, accompanied by Sholto Kynoch.

Sakari Oramo takes the reins for his first Last Night of the Proms, alongside dazzling violinist Janine Jansen and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony is anything but "lambkins frisking", drawing on the composer's experiences in the First World War. In this poignant concert, it was partnered by a trio of works by composers - from both sides of the trenches - who died in action. 

The penultimate concert in a three-year project to record the complete songs of Hugo Wolf, this Oxford Lieder Festival concert’s programme was based around settings of Goethe.

On a hot, humid summer’s evening, Sakari Oramo made his debut as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. That the occasion was the first night of the BBC Proms 2013 didn’t seem to bother him. The Finn’s combination of serenity and confidence – and just enough passion to assure us that he was enjoying it – set the tone for an intriguing, if oddly assembled programme.

The reason for this all-American programme was ostensibly pragmatic: the concert was to coincide with the opening night of the British-American Business Council annual conference. In practice, the programme was a triumph. Significantly, dozens of schoolchildren were present to witness an evening of fine and involving music-making.The concert began with Charles Ives’ Variations on America.

All too often opera in concert is presented in its most basic format, without the theatricality and staging so characteristic to its execution. However, when a presentation comes along from the likes of The King’s Consort, you can be sure that justice will be served, even without the smoke and mirrors we’ve all grown to love.