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Can a perfect performance of the stupendous Gurrelieder be anything other than five stars?

The LSO opens its three-concert Sydney stay with a panoply of colours and virtuoso orchestral playing in a programme of Adams, Debussy and Ravel, under the masterful leadership of Sir Simon Rattle

Simone Young  is made of stern stuff. With 30 hours to go before the concert performance, her Leonore falls ill. Can the show go on? 

Simone Young marks the start of her tenure at the helm of the Sydney Symphony with a performance that showcases the outstanding acoustics of the renovated Concert Hall.

As the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall closes for extensive refurbishment, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performs early, massive Mahler under Simone Young. 

Voltaire and Bernstein's wilful political incorrectness make Candide a challenge to behold, but the Sydney Philharmonia meets them in a concert performance in the opera house.

C minor and C major are at the centre of Masaaki Suzuki's Haydn and Beethoven programme with the Sydney Symphony. 

The SSO left its usual venue to perform Gustav Mahler’s monumental Symphony no. 2 in C minor in the Sydney Town Hall.

Masaaki Suzuki’s debut with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

A performance of Wagner’s epic Tristan und Isolde, a testimony for all-enduring love, is a welcome event anywhere in the world. 

One of the pleasures of attending live concerts is discovering sounds that recordings often mask or fail to highlight. Occasionally, the sheer enormity of the experience can be so stunning that I reel from it for days. The “2013 Season Special Event” of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Thursday was one of those occasions.

Continuing with Sibelius, the Sydney Symphony presented another Finnish epic in their latest concert, this time Sibelius’ Kullervo Symphony. However, first of all we were treated to a Ravel masterpiece, his Piano Concerto in D for the left hand.This concerto was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.

I have always been skeptical of concert performances of operas. Operas are written to be acted, and the staging is needed to complement the music. This is what I thought before I saw this performance of Ashkenazy conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

The concert to open the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's 80th Anniversary Series was very much one of contrasts. With the promise of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the season seemed to be opening in celebratory style. However, the entire first half was devoted to Richard Strauss' Metamorphosen, a piece which is a far cry from the triumphant finale of the Beethoven.

Mahler's Second Symphony is most certainly epic and needs an epic performance to do it justice. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs went some way to achieving this on Friday night. The symphony deals with weighty themes of life, death and resurrection and contains Mahler's own vision of immortality in its triumphant conclusion.

In spite of Mahler's disapproval, his eighth symphony is forever tagged as the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the immense choirs which perform it.