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

Yordan Kamdzhalov's final concert as GMD Heidelberg presents Alina Pogostkina in a glowing performance of Vasks' Distant Light, and shines in Bruckner 9 with reconstructed finale.

This concert, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, opened with that composer’s most influential phrase – the beginning of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde wherein the Tristan chord, which is reputed to have had such an unsettling effect on the harmonic language of all who followed, first stole upon the ears of 19th-century music lovers.

If the craft of the conductor has ever been a mystery to you – for it can certainly be a mystery to the orchestra – there couldn’t have been a finer explanation than this showcase concert.