Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Ian Bostridge

Following her Billy Budd and Peter Grimes, Deborah Warner directs a third Britten opera at the Teatro Costanzi. 

Howard Griffiths conducts English music in Belgrade. Ian Bostridge and Nikola Ćirić star and Britten's Serenade and Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony wow the Serbian audience.

Alban Gerhardt and Steven Osborne offered a vivid and memorable reprise of Ben and Slava's iconic recital of 1961. 

Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO demonstrate the mercurial tension in Britten’s Serenade and Elgar’s First Symphony in the season finale. 

Brad Mehldau’s song cycle is a disappointment, the texts selected under the rubric of “desire” proving a major concern.

Excellent performances and stage direction make a good case for an opera that's on the slow side dramatically.

Embraced by Daniel Harding, Ian Bostridge, Christian Tetzlaff, Alban Gerhardt and Paul Lewis, the Parisian ensemble gives an exceptional concert, faithful to Lars Vogt’s way of making music.

Sir Antonio Pappano molds a dramatic yet intimate performance of Britten's great choral work, powerful and moving.

Two dozen heroes played one of the house composer’s most intense and technically demanding scores with bravura skill and a collegiate musicality that stirred the spirit.

Song cycles by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ernest Chausson are paired at the Barbican.

A deep-dive into the world of 14th-century Persian poet, Hafez, and his influence on song across the centuries. 

In a world where winter never comes, Ian Bostridge suggested a Cartagenan equivalent of Schubert's Winterreise experiment in which the most unimaginable beauties come at the expense of unbearable pain.

Pappano never put a foot wrong as he dug precious beauties from beneath his fingers.

It’s always a heart-warming sight to see so many young people at the Barbican as members of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain shared the stage with equal composure as the London Symphony Chorus and string players from the LSO.

Britten's War Requiem at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden with Antonio Pappano conducting

Claus Guth's production of Handel's last oratorio lands in Paris, where William Christie leads Les Arts Florissants and a stellar cast. 

Ian Bostridge and Wenwen Du deliver Schubert's song cycle with great musicianship, but Bostridge lacks the presence that makes live performance a special treat.

Both of these works are united in their depiction of love gained and lost, and embodied Berlioz’s take on love and music, which the composer called, “the two wings of the soul”. 

Ian Bostridge and Lars Vogt bring their recital tour to Sage Gateshead, where they bring bold physicality to their interpretations of songs by Schubert and Beethoven. 

Shakespeare songs turned out to be more of a Shakespeare feast starring Antonio Pappano, Ian Bostridge and the exceptional Eve Best.

Darkly illuminated music at Berlin's Komische Oper. 

Britten's The Turn of the Screw finally makes its debut at La Scala in Kasper Holten's eerie staging. 

Ian Bostridge's exploration of Britten and Tippett song cycles is overshadowed by a fantastic string quartet in a mixed programme at Aldeburgh.

The OSM closes out the 2015-16 season with all guns blazing and an ethereal flag of peace in a splendid battle of Britten.

Hans Zender's composed interpretation of Schubert's great song-cycle Winterreise, sung by Ian Bostridge, with visuals by Netia Jones, reveals the stark beauty, timelessness and philosophical qualities of Schubert’s music and Mueller’s poetry.

Lincoln Center' White Light Festival presents Benjamin Britten's Curlew River with an excellent ensemble of singers and musicians. 

Ian Bostridge and Håvard Gimse gave a chilling performance of Schubert's Winterreise, but much of the emotional impact got lost in theatricalities.

British lyric tenor Ian Bostridge presents an outstanding Schubert recital with his regular partner Julius Drake. 

Composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem is a monumental setting of the words of the Latin Mass, interspersed with the poignant poetry of Wilfred Owen.

Amidst the furore of celebrations for the anniversaries of Verdi and Wagner, the final Chamber Prom of this season gave pause to savour the music of the great English Renaissance lutenist, singer and composer John Dowland, whose 450th birthday also falls this year.

Two figures occupied Usher Hall’s large stage. More accurately, two performers, as there was also a very focused page turner, removing played pages as though they were explosives. Seated at the piano was Lars Vogt, last seen in this hall during Edinburgh Festival 2012 in a joyous performance of Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto.

In last night’s Prom 51, Daniel Harding conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme that was partially planned by Colin Davis and was due to be conducted by him.

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Benjamin Britten’s birth, Antonio Pappano led the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Choir, together with first-class soloists, in an intense performance of the War Requiem.

Conductor H.K. Gruber’s visits to the BBC Philharmonic are guaranteed to be unmissable concerts of the season; with unquenchable enthusiasm and pride in the music he programmes, Gruber, (known affectionately to all as “Nali”), always assures a stirring performance.

Sometimes, glancing through reviews and recordings of Baroque opera arias, one might be forgiven for wondering whether tenors and basses ever appeared on the 18th-century stage – the genre seems dominated by the exotic lives of the castrati and the incredibly exciting music that was written for them.

Why would the London Symphony Orchestra pair Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 in C major, “Jupiter” and Mahler’s songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn? There seemed to be no direct link between them other than that both demonstrate their composers’ fondness for mystery.

It is not often you find Monteverdi and Stravinsky snuggled side-by-side on the same programme, but that was exactly what was packed into the latest instalment of The Bostridge Project: ‘Ancient and Modern’ series at the Wigmore Hall.

‘Fêtes Galantes’ is one of those glorious French phrases that sounds so wonderful but is nigh on impossible to translate. Rather than having any concrete meaning, it evokes Watteau-esque imagery of woodland gatherings, where eighteenth-century aristocrats amuse themselves by flirting, dancing and making music.

They are sadly few in number, but some things in this St. John Passion I can report in mildly positive terms would include Stephen Layton’s hand-selected choir Polyphony, whose members dealt with Bach’s demanding vocal lines capably and sang in clear, idiomatic German; bass-baritone Neal Davies (a perfectly respectable if not overly engaging Christ); and Derek Welton’s robustly s

An outstanding lineup of soloists joined Bernard Labadie at Carnegie Hall Sunday for a performance of J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion. Hearing Labadie conduct his own ensemble Les Violons du Roy and the chamber choir La Chapelle de Québec with such a superb group of soloists was truly a treat indeed.

Tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake presented a stunning program of Lieder by Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and his protégé Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) on 7 March at the Perelman Theater of the Kimmel Center, as part of the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society’s fine series. The small hall, nearly full, lent itself perfectly to the intimate performance of Lieder.

Famous for his operas, Benjamin Britten had been planning something new for some time when he was invited in 1958 to compose a work to celebrate the rebuilding of the bombed Coventry Cathedral. The composer saw the resulting War Requiem as a force for unification, choosing his three soloists from the UK, USSR and Germany, the countries he believed to have suffered the most during World War Two.

Piano. Concerto. Opera. The Italian origins of these well-known musical words hint at the enormous influence that country had on the musical world during the Baroque period, when classical music as we know it began to take shape. The scale of this influence was explored last night by Ian Bostridge, tenor and former historian, in the first concert of his year-long residency at the Wigmore Hall.

The poetry of Arthur Rimbaud was, to borrow a phrase from the 1960s, "way out there." His 1870s collection Les Illuminations inspired Benjamin Britten, who set a selection of the poems to music: the words are surreal, bizarre, sometimes erotic, always onomatopoeic and packed with interesting sounds.

The Holland Festival boasts quite an impressive relationship with Britten and his works. Tonight’s chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia was first performed at the festival in 1947 with Britten, Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier (for whom the opera was written) and the English Opera Group. Tonight’s performance with Oliver Knussen at the helm is another proud continuation of this tradition.

Back in London after a sell-out US tour, English tenor Ian Bostridge CBE, with his wonderful pianist Julius Drake, proved his extraordinary range and versatility as a singer with a programme featuring music by Tippett, Britten, Bach, Haydn and Weill. This special concert had an extra resonance, as it marked Sir John Tusa’s last day as Chairman of the Wigmore Hall Trust.

Magnifiquement interprétée par Les Talens Lyriques et le Chœur de chambre de Namur, l'œuvre de Bach a éclipsé le Stabat Mater de Pergolesi, donné par un B'Rock Orchestra et un René Jacobs en petite forme.

Le Voyage d'hiver recomposé par Hans Zender et interprété par Ian Bostridge et Antonio Pappano s'est avéré décevant à tout point de vue.

Europa Galante y el Cor de Cambra del Palau de la Música se unen en el escenario bajo la dirección de Fabio Biondi para dar vida a Orfeo, de Monteverdi.