Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Sasha Cooke

Returning to the first work he officially conducted as the Philadelphia Orchestra's Music Director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin offers a powerful study in contrasts, supported by a superb quartet of opera soloists.

A chamber programme of Shostakovich’s private idioms and public masks

In a rewarding program of challenging, unfamiliar scores, Thomas Adès and The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus tackle works by Sibelius, Ives, Saariaho, and Adès himself.

As part of a festival considering the composer's oeuvre, Leon Botstein leads a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust lacking in French style. 

The composer's powerful When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd anchored a thought-provoking program led by Michael Stern.

The strings brought gleaming tone to their long phrases, the cellos particularly gorgeous in tone and deeply felt in phrasing, and New built each restatement to glorious and emotional crushing climax. 

Michael Tilson Thomas leads the Philharmonic in the New York premiere of his song cycle Meditations on Rilke.

DSO music director Jader Bignamini leads his ensemble in the glory of Beethoven’s Ninth, prefaced by a recent work written as a companion piece to the symphony.

Harry Bicket brings verve and distinctiveness to a stellar cast in Stephen Wadsworth's production, which is neither conventional nor daring.

The first fully staged American production of Chausson's sole opera features remarkable singing, fine storytelling and plush orchestral playing.

The outgoing music director of the San Francisco Symphony made a brilliant impression with his own Meditations on Rilke, with Sasha Cooke and Dashon Burton as soloists. Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique was given a revelatory performance.

The evening’s most revelatory performance came from the young countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen as Medoro. 

Susan Graham had all the fun every mezzo-soprano witch, who can sing the role and disguise herself – when necessary – to look the part, deserves. 

This weekend’s performance of the Symphony no. 2 in C minor had innumerable beautifully detailed moments, with two excellent soloists and an immaculately prepared chorus. 

Michael Tilson Thomas, Sasha Cooke, and choristers from the Pacific Boychoir and San Francisco Chorus come together in a phenomenal performance of Mahler's all-encompassing Third Symphony. 

Even without stage machinery or sets, The English Concert’s performance of Handel’s Rinaldo was enchanting. 

There were plenty of vocal fireworks in this concert performance of Handel’s opera. 

A decent cast was unable to redeem a fundamentally dull opera that lacks the psycholgical complexity and tension of both the original Graham novel and its famous Hitchcock adaptation.

Mason Bates's much-hyped first opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, excited Santa Fe audiences despite its dramatic shortcomings.

Robert Spano leads a masterfully staged performance of Theofanidis' grand oratorio Creation/Creator.

The Hallé's Elgar Festival concludes with the work the composer wished to be remembered by. 

The CSO’s season-long celebration of Prokofiev’s 125th birthday had its watershed moment with the composer’s monumental score to Ivan the Terrible.

Edward Gardner paid a memorable visit to lead the Seattle Symphony in a transformative account of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.

Donald Runnicles conducts Duruflé's Requiem and orchestral Debussy at the Kennedy. 

After an absence of nearly a quarter-century, Humperdinck's evergreen returns to Seattle Opera in a winningly staged, musically sensitive production that looks beneath the fairy-tale surface.

Michael Tilson Thomas, leading the San Francisco Symphony in an invigorating performance of works by both Schubert and Mahler, emphasized the idea of repetition as an evolution rather than a lie.

San Francisco Symphony presents Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in all its glory. The addition of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony filled out the program, but seemed very much an afterthought.

The English Concert give us a truly exceptional concert performance of Orlando, starring Iestyn Davies in the title role, with a strong cast and glorious singing: but it's begging for a proper staging. 

This performance marked Sir Mark Elder’s debut with the company and, beginning with the overture, he offered his individual interpretation of the score. He had an enormous range of dynamics and his tempi varied widely with the emotional values of each scene.

Staging the operatic behemoth that is Berlioz's Les Troyens comes with huge challenges to harness the artistic, technical and dramatic qualities in a work which spans more than four hours. 

Soprano Amber Wagner debuts with a flair that reminds us that Verdi's Requiem has dramatic roots.

Two mountain-themed operas were performed recently in Dallas, including the much-anticipated world première of Joby Talbot's Everest. 

Michael Tilson Thomas brings together the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the ladies of the London Symphony Chorus and choristers of St Paul's Cathedral in an astounding performance of Mahler's great Symphony no. 3.

Pierre Boulez builds a deceptively brilliant program featuring works by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra follows through on its execution.

Seeing a classical concert at the Hollywood Bowl is always an event. While (to put it kindly) it is not the ideal acoustic for classical music, the iconic venue is surrounded by glowing hills and always seems to have perfect weather.

The bits of conversation I overheard during intermission and in the aisles after the world première of Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene at San Francisco Opera were assorted variations of “so, what did you think?” World premières are, indeed, auspicious occasions that privilege first-nighters to experience the work before anyone else has molded or influenced their thoughts about it.

Robert Spano conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus in an ambitious concert in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The results were as mixed as the programming, which featured J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 and Magnificat, alongside Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine.

There is an electric guitar on stage at Boston's Symphony Hall, and it is not a Pops concert.John Harbison's Symphony no. 5 for baritone, mezzo-soprano and orchestra up-ends what we think of as a symphony, presenting the voice as an instrument and recalibrating the form.

Read our review of Penny Woolcock's production of Doctor Atomic by John Adams, in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of  Richard Jones' production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

L'adaptation opératique du film d'Ingmar Bergman ne se distingue certes pas par l'originalité de sa musique mais n'en demeure pas moins une réussite, dotée d'une grande profondeur psychologique.

Malgré la joie de retrouver Jonas Kaufmann en forme dans le rôle de Tristan, la soirée wagnérienne a globalement manqué d'inspiration.

Spécialistes du répertoire berliozien, John Nelson et l'Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg ont offert une production très estimable de Béatrice et Bénédict, malgré un Toby Spence en délicatesse dans le rôle-titre.

Poétique plus que métaphysique, le Mahler de Michael Tilson Thomas et du San Francisco Symphony a largement convaincu le public de la salle Pleyel ; l'excellence de l'orchestre et la beauté des voix ont compensé sans peine l'apparente sobriété de l'interprétation pour transporter les auditeurs.