Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Oliver Knussen

Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group excel in a cunningly linked group of works from the old (mid 1980s) to the brand new.

Brahms's Second Piano Concerto acts as the enlightening partner to Dutch avant-garde composer Reinbert de Leeuw's first symphonic work in 40 years, under the baton of Oliver Knussen.

A programme of personal choices curated by George Benjamin in collaboration with Oliver Knussen – that didn’t quite hang together but with two UK  premières it was a fascinating evening. 

Lean yet nuanced performances from Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in commemoration of Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday

Oliver Knussen, the RSNO and Edinburgh Festival Chorus offer rarely heard titanic works in a packed Usher Hall.

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are masterful, but chamber works lack context during the birthday celebrations at Milton Court.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Scottish Chamber Orchestra composer in residence in the late 1980s, seemed an appropriate choice to write a piece for this, the orchestra’s 40th anniversary year. As the title suggests, Concert Overture: Ebb of Winter was written during the approach of Spring this year and portrays the changing seasons in Maxwell Davies’ adopted homeland of Orkney.

Concerts conducted by Oliver Knussen are always impeccably programmed, with surprising connections often teased out between unusual pieces. His 2013 Proms appearance was no exception to this rule, juxtaposing two contrasting works for piano and orchestra by Igor Stravinsky, in between a symphonic sandwich of orchestral pieces by Hans Werner Henze and Michael Tippett.

In days gone by, if you went to see a Mahler Symphony, you wouldn't feel you’d had the full experience unless Gustav himself was waving the baton. Nowadays the privilege of watching a composer conduct his own work is a somewhat rarer one, though fortunately not yet a completely extinct practice, and watching Knussen’s Symphony No.

It must be heart-warming for a young composer, sharing the bill with Beethoven and Stravinsky, to know that the programme has been named after her piece. The clear, confident writing in Helen Grime's A Cold Spring (2009) effectively conveyed the visual contrast offered by sharp-edged, bright days at this time of year.

Oliver Knussen has a reputation for presenting interesting and unusual programmes, and this evening in the sumptuous Barbican Hall was no exception. This concert featured new and rarely-performed music, including both a world première and a UK première.The opening Symphony no. 10 by Nikolai Miaskovsky was a triumph.

Oliver Knussen has taken the BBC Symphony Orchestra on some interesting journeys during his relationship with them, as both composer and conductor. Of all these journeys, Prom 19 surely ranks among the most fascinating. Under Knussen’s masterful conducting, the orchestra and Claire Booth gave us a scintillating if sometimes overwhelming exhibition of six intense early Twentieth Century works.

The Holland Festival boasts quite an impressive relationship with Britten and his works. Tonight’s chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia was first performed at the festival in 1947 with Britten, Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier (for whom the opera was written) and the English Opera Group. Tonight’s performance with Oliver Knussen at the helm is another proud continuation of this tradition.