Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | James Gilchrist

Stuart Skelton’s visceral Peter Grimes is matched by a strong cast with thrilling playing and singing from the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner.

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

A verdant and heavenly setting for The Creation

An evening of Lieder with James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook promised well, and did deliver occasionally, but sadly enthusiasm got the better of style more than once. 

A riveting account of Handel's Samson in Dublin, with Katherine Watson, James Gilchrist and Madeleine Shaw shining as soloists. 

James Gilchrist and Royal Northern Sinfonia conjure up the hills of Yeats' Ireland and Housman's Shropshire in a Late Mix concert at Sage Gateshead.

The English Concert play beautifully, the chorus is in superb voice, but a disjointed cast of unconvincing singers mean Hercules never reaches heroic heights.

Florilegium and tenor James Gilchrist give intelligent and engaging performances of music by Bach and his contemporaries including some repertoire unfairly neglected in today's concert halls. 

From the insistent, driving opening to the sublime transcendence of the closing chorale, Norrington, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and James Gilchrist give us a St John Passion to remember.

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

Handel's Solomon is given a revelatory performance by an all-star cast of principles, La Chapelle de Québec and the Violons du Roy under the direction of Bernard Labadie.

Anyone craving an antidote to the Wagner marathon at the Proms could look no further than the third in the Proms Chamber Music series at Cadogan Hall.

Shortly after a disguised Wotan stepped onto the stage in the third instalment of Barenboim’s Proms Ring, across London another of German music’s great wanderers put in an appearance. It may have been a warm July evening outside, but from the first notes of this compelling Winterreise from James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook the temperature in Wigmore Hall seemed to plummet well below zero.

With such a star-studded line-up at a concert that had been sold out for weeks, this was always going to be an evening to remember. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of those iconic pieces that never gets old, and every time I hear the throbbing bass of the opening chorus, I still get a tingle of excitement.

As I walked to this concert by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir, I wondered what might have changed in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Beethoven in the two decades since he first recorded these symphonies.

There are some musical compositions that have always been a bit of a gamble, for composers, performers and even listeners. They might be exceptionally difficult, require extraordinary forces, or show such originality as to be perpetually startling.

Gustav Leonhardt, who died in January this year, was a great pioneer in the early music movement – as harpsichordist, organist, conductor and teacher – and he influenced all subsequent musicians in the field whether directly or indirectly. Nicolette Moonen, founder of the Bach Players, was one such musician who, while growing up in Amsterdam, took up the baroque violin inspired by his playing.

The ‘semi-opera’ was an English musical and spoken theatre hybrid which by the end of the 17th century had begun to scrape the bottom of Restoration drama’s literary barrel, and by the 18th had been rendered obsolete by efforts to introduce the English to formal opera from the continent.

Easter wouldn't be complete without a performance of the St Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach's epic and intense interpretation of the crucifixion.

The Holywell Music Room in Oxford, with its bright and reverberant sound, was purpose-built as a concert hall, and opened in 1748. To hear four experienced and top-class singers last night, all of whom were able to work the specifics of this unique and historic room, to sing to it and use it as their instrument, was sheer joy.

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