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Newly General Music Director Christian Thielemann and Jan Philipp Gloger bring Richard Strauss' Die schweigsame Frau to the Staatsoper Berlin for the first time, but la commedia is hardly stupenda. 

Christian Thielemann conducts bracing accounts of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony and Strauss' Ein Heldenleben in the Concertgebouw's fabled acoustic. 

Even if Igor Levit is not quite in his wheelhouse with Brahms, the Vienna Philharmonic plays a home game in the second half with his D major symphony. 

David Bösch directs a creative and thoughtful new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Semperoper in Christian Thielemann's final opera as Principal Conductor. 

Vincent Huguet's 2019 production of Richard Strauss‘ masterpiece is given a stupendous revival at the Wiener Staatsoper with an excellent ensemble of soloists.

The Vienna Philharmonic’s annual visit has long been one of the highlights of the Carnegie Hall season and do not disappoint in this year's visit, with Christian Thielemann. 

Katharina Thalbach offers a traditional staging at the Semperoper, with fine vocal performances led by Krassimira Stoyanova, Francesco Meli and Oksana Volkova. 

In the Sonatina, Thielemann conducted the BRSO winds through the myriad of characteristic Strauss motifs with easy-going rubato.

Christian Thielemann shows his lighter side, while the Berlin Philharmonic play music they haven't touched in nearly a century.

Forget powerhouse “hojotohos” and sandblasting brass. Elīna Garanča and Christian Thielemann offered more intimate portraits of these composers at the Großes Festspielhaus.

Two rarely performed works and an evergreen show off the prowess of this first class orchestra.

A great orchestra visits Tokyo, but mediocre conducting disappoints. 

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra plays a programme by many Strausses – even Richard – in a programme conducted by Christian Thielemann. 

Yuval Sharon's production returns to Bayreuth in a musically compelling performance. 

The outstanding trio of Nylund, Stemme and Herlitzius soars above a Vienna State Opera Orchestra in thunderous form, led by Christian Thielemann to celebrate the Staatsoper's 150th birthday in style.

Christian Thielemann led a memorable performance of Strauss's chamber opera Ariadne auf Naxos with a strong cast in a new straightforward production by David Hermann.

If you like your Schumann symphonies the old fashioned way with lush, sonorous strings and heroic horns and brass, then Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are for you.

With a plethora of theatre seats, stools and benches it was as if Willy Decker and Wolfgang Gussman had been elected ‘Chair-men of the bored”.

The third installment of Semperoper Dresden’s Ring des Nibelungen cycle ups the ante with an outstanding ensemble performance.

Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra are let down by sub-optimal singers in Willy Deckers chair-laden production of  Die Walküre. 

Wagner demands vocal resilience from the large cast of singers in Das Rheingold, but Willy Decker wants strong thigh muscles as well.

An exceptional musical performance was enhanced by a streamlined but ultimately moving staging in an evening of near perfection in Dresden.

Renée Fleming swoons in Strauss' Four Last Songs, while having Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden are our guides in the Alpine Symphony. 

Christian Thielemann, the Staatskapelle Dresden and a star-studded cast compress Wagner's Ring cycle into a tale of Siegmund, Sieglinde, Hunding and Brünnhilde.

Gidon Kremer, long-time champion of Sofia Gubaidulina, joined the Berliner Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann for a performance of In tempus praesens.

Pianist Kit Armstrong proved that prodigious talent and good taste can be found in the same artist, while Christian Thielemann disappoints in Strauss’ blockbusting Alpine Symphony.

A polished and deeply moving Beethoven Violin Concerto from Nikolaj Znaider was complemented by exquisite and vibrant performances of Max Reger and Richard Strauss from the Staatskapelle Dresden.

Thielemann and the Dresden Staatskapelle show that they are world class; Daniil Trifonov shows total mastery of his instrument in Mozart.

Despite a miscast Isolde, Wagner's operatic monument to love makes its mark in the production by the composer's great-grandaughter.

Anna Netreboko chose to perform her first Elsa in Dresden with Christian Thielemann conducting.  It was a remarkable performance never to be forgotten.

A conceptually diffuse production of Tristan from Katharina Wagner is partially redeemed by stirring orchestral playing under the direction of Christian Thielemann and some fine singing at the opening of the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth.

Christian Thielemann and his orchestra were the stars of an excellent performance of Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer. 

A modern, simple production of Simon Boccanegra at Dresden's Semperoper, doesn’t interfere with the action.  

Bruckner, like all symphonic-minded composers after Beethoven, had a finale problem, or so the conventional wisdom goes. How, after all, could one follow the Ninth? At his very greatest, Bruckner solved this with ingenious formal devices (his Fifth Symphony) or through sheer force of emotional and religious will (his Eighth).

Christian Thielemann’s repertoire is broader than is often made out, but not that much broader. At its heart are the four composers most associated with late Austro-Germanic Romanticism: Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Anton Bruckner.

“Der Sir”, they used to call him. The death of Sir Colin Davis has been a strikingly international event, and New York has been no exception. Over at Lincoln Center, Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic opened their latest subscription run with “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a joint tribute to the British conductor and the people of Boston (another of Sir Colin’s haunts).

Whatever our relationship with music we often have moments in our lives where the thing we’ve always loved feels like little more than a habit, or worse still a chore. You go to a concert and sit through it, and you know in your head that the orchestra played well and that the soloists were excellent, but your heart remains unmoved.

Puccini is one of opera’s best loved composers. With so many popular titles to his name, it is somewhat surprising how infrequently his first great success, Manon Lescaut, is performed today. What makes this even more unusual is the opera’s universal appeal.

The Staatskapelle Dresden is widely recognised as one of the best orchestras in the world, featuring in tenth place in Gramophone magazine’s 2008 article ranking the world’s 20 finest orchestras. This season the orchestra welcomes Christian Thielemann as its new main conductor, and this concert began his much anticipated Brahms cycle with his new orchestra.

The success of Grafenegg, a relative newcomer to the Austrian summer festival scene, lies in the timing: held in the last week of August and first week of September, the festival has become an additional tour date for international orchestras engaged at the BBC Proms and Salzburg and Lucerne festivals, as well as a stop for German orchestras looking to take their first concert of the new season on

For any opera lover, a first visit to Bayreuth is something of a pilgrimage to the holy land. Musically, I wasn’t disappointed, as the Dutchman’s leitmotif rose softly from the invisible orchestra, soon to be enveloped by the swirling storm brewed up by Wagner and conductor Christian Thielemann.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal began their collaboration on Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with utopian ambitions. Unfortunately they weren’t the same ones. For Hofmannsthal, this would finally be the opera where his poetry would be illuminated by rather than buried under the music.

Christian Thielemann und Piotr Beczała begeistern mit *Lohengrin* bei den Bayreuther Festspielen.

Christian Thielamnn und Klaus Florian Vogt als Lohengrin sind einmal mehr eine Klasse für sich.

Die Strauss-Fans jubeln, und das ist gut so: Christian Thielemann und Michael Volle sorgen für einen fast schon zu perfekten Strauss-Abend.

Wenn Christian Thielemann an der Wiener Staatsoper dirigiert, strömt das Stammpublikum – zurecht! – ins Haus wie die Katholiken zur Papstmesse.

Christian Thielemann dirigiert ein triumphales Antrittskonzert als neuer Generalmusikdirektor der Staatskapelle Berlin.

Die Wiener Philharmoniker begeistern unter Christian Thielemann mit Schumann und Bruckner.