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Benedikt von Peter's new staging of Bach's St Matthew Passion premieres at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, under Alessandro De Marchi. But despite the good synergy between director and conductor and a first-rate vocal ensemble, the production falls somewhat flat.

An outstanding performance from Christina Pluhar's army of generals, but a flawed Barbican live stream. 

Benjamin Britten’s 1948 cantata communicates with more invention and originality than recent works by Tabakova and Rutter.

Promoting Leonore, the original version of Beethoven's Fidelio, René Jacobs made several choices of his own, only some of them justifiable.

John Butt’s revisitation of the Handel oratorio Samson at the Halle Handel Festival displayed this treasured work in an illuminating and satisfying light.

Despite the longueurs of the piece, this performance of Solomon was pretty much perfect. 

Harry Bicket leads Royal Northern Sinfonia and Chorus and a fine line-up of soloists in a performance that moves effortlessly between the human and eternal time lines of Bach's St John Passion.

A curious combination of Mozart’s “Great” Mass and Shostakovich’s Twelfth Symphony fill Worcester Cathedral with exuberance.

The fashion for reviving Mozart's teenage operas brings a vocally dazzling production of Lucio Silla to Buxton, nevertheless hampered by the work's own lack of believable drama and some fairly flat staging. 

A superb concert from the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder included John Casken's 2014 oboe concerto Apollinaire's Bird, a rare piece by Elgar and Vaughan Williams' powerful Fourth Symphony. 

Under the baton of Harry Christophers and direction of Penny Woolcock, Streetwise Opera, The Sixteen, Sixteen Orchestra, backed by a number of Manchester-based organisations came together to bring a well-crafted Easter dramatisation of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s seminal oratorios. 

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.

J S Bach's opus ultimum, the Mass in B Minor, was also the opus ultimum of the year-long Bach Unwrapped series at Kings Place. Unfortunately, it proved not to be the crowning glory it might have been.

“Made in Yorkshire” was a misleading title for this afternoon concert because the connections with the county were tenuous: tenor Joshua Ellicott made a point of reminding us before he started that he was born on the other side of the Pennines, and the only apparent link for soprano Bibi Heal, clarinettist Colin Honour and the man at the piano Anthony Kraus (a popular and respected chorusmaster an

Celebrating the Wagner centenary in 1913, the Hallé Orchestra gave a concert performance in Manchester of Acts II and III from Wagner’s epic final masterpiece Parsifal.

Handel’s original version of Acis and Galatea was written in 1717–18 at Cannons, a stately home in Middlesex. Composed with light orchestration, it was not meant to be performed in an opera theatre, but rather in this private mansion.

Those closing bars of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, tottering away into nothingness, is one of the great nexus points in musical history.

The music of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius (1862–1934) is a love or hate affair. Whether you bask in the romantic lushness of his godless and nature-influenced ramblings, or find yourself drowning in a poor-quality school soup consisting of unappetisingly vague harmonic shifts, he is a composer that inspires passionate discussion.

The concept of freedom is at the heart of Opera North's current production of Fidelio. As soon as you open your programme, you are encouraged by the company's General Director Richard Mantle to consider Beethoven's only opera as having something to say about the struggle for liberty that has been taking place in the Middle East over the past few months.

Malgré d'excellents Talens Lyriques, cette Passion mise en scène par Calixto Bieito s'avère plutôt convenue et ne renouvelle guère l’approche de l’œuvre.

Eine etwas zu besinnliche Messias-Tradition verhindert ein spannenderes, abwechslungsreicheres Erlebnis, das aber vom Ensemble hervorragend musiziert wurde.