Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo

As part of its centenary celebrations this season, the NHK Symphony Orchestra has curated a Japanese Composer Series with three intriguing concerts, of which this concert is the second.

María Dueñas’ Tokyo performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto is less about display than about the living drama between held breath and release. 

As a leading exponent of Franz Schmidt's music, conductor Fabio Luisi leads the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo in a rare performance of his Fourth Symphony for the orchestra's season opener.

Conducted by Fabio Luisi, Japan's premier orchestra serves up a superb blend of Eastern and Western music and influences. 

At Suntory Hall, Ton Koopman and the NHK Symphony Orchestra bring elegance and exuberance to an all-Mozart programme including a flute concerto featuring its principal flautist.

For whatever reason Fabio Luisi chose Verdi's Requiem for his inauguration concert with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, it turned out to be an apt and poignant choice.

Igor Stravinsky once described Sergei Rachmaninov as "a six-and-a-half foot scowl". His Second Symphony – often a lugubrious affair – was here turned into something urgent and vital. 

Paarvo Järvi and the NHK Symphony give a riveting account of Schumann and Schubert.

Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, gives a performance of perhaps the most famous of Bedrich Smetana’s works, a romantic tribute to his motherland, Má vlast.

Nikolaj Znaider and Fabio Luisi, along with NHKSO Tokyo, re-stated the obvious truth of art music that “it is all about the details.”

Is the very, very good the enemy of the great? It is hard to fault a performance as fine as this – except perhaps against a benchmark no longer recognised.

This was without a doubt the best performance of Mahler's First Symphony. Norrington's humor comes through and complements his superb musicianship.The First often gets bogged down, but this performance was bright and alwaysexciting giving the instrumentalists enough room to show their skills... andwhat skills.I have no doubt that the NHK Symphony is the greatest orchestraat this time.

Retour attendu que celui de l'ancien directeur musical de l'Orchestre de Paris. Celui qui sut porter à ses sommets la phalange parisienne exerce-t-il le même art avec sa nouvelle formation, l'Orchestra de la NHK de Tokyo ?