Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Hilary Cronin

Schiff takes the long view in Mendelssohn's unfashionable masterpiece. 

The London Handel Festival offers a chance to hear rarely performed music for Passiontide, with Harry Bicket conducting the English Concert. 

The Hallé orchestra and choir pack out Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall for a Messiah which both delights and disappoints. 

Dinis Sousa conducts the combined forces of the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir in L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

How do you conduct the same over-familiar work for the 200th time, and make it sound quite new?

The Solomon's Knot collective offered a lively account of four cantatas from Bach's Christmas Oratorio. 

Die Jahrzehnte dauernde Rückkehr des Dirigenten nach Heidelberg avanciert zu einem ergreifenden, begeisternden Fest von Botschaft und Musik, mit dem er interpretatorisch weiter in fast eigener Liga spielt.