Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Peter Oundjian

The Seattle Symphony co-commissions a new work, Jan Lisiecki plays Mozart with religious fervor, and Stravinsky's Sacre still creates an uproar.

The return visit of former Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Toronto SO brings a programme of invigorating energy.

A manic 20th-century ride and a Technicolor showpiece bookend the astounding virtuosity of superstar pianist Lang Lang.

With conductor Peter Oundijan, the Indianapolis Symphony showcases two principals in Brahms’ Double Concerto, the program rounded out with Pictures at an Exhibition.

When Alisa Weilerstein stepped on stage to play Joan Tower's new cello concerto during a Colorado thunderstorm, it was a case of three elemental powers conspiring to create.

The world premiere of Hannah Lash's Forestallings, rooted in her childhood love of Beethoven's Second Symphony, links to Peter Oundjian's arrangement of the Op.131 string quartet later in the program. 

Britten's profoundly pacifist work is given a calm reading by Peter Oundjian and the RSNO: soprano Erin Wall, the RSNO Junior Chorus and the wind players provide the high spots of the evening.

Peter Oundjian’s final concert as RSNO’s Music Director sums up his time with the orchestra perfectly. 

Peter Oundjian was at the top of his game with Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Shostakovich and Scriabin.

Peter Oundjian’s final Bruckner with the RSNO reveals real strengths.

Guest Conductor Peter Oudjian teams with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and concertmaster David Coucheron to perform Saint-Saëns’s Third Violin Concerto.

Hadelich dazzles, but Oundjian's Brahms is bland. 

Rihm is probably Germany’s most famous living composer, and he has a reputation for cerebral intellectualism in his music. That’s admirable, but it doesn’t make him approachable. 

The RSNO season begins with The Rite which ignites… eventually.

A crowd-pleaser is joined by a Szymanowski rarity to close the TSO's season. 

The RSNO’s Mahler 3 is jubilant, life-affirming and memorable under the conductor Peter Oundjian. 

A superstar soloist helps the Toronto Symphony Orchestra offer a telling tribute to Czech conductor Karel Ančerl.

After a 34 year hiatus from the Konzerthaus stage, the Toronto Symphony gave a knockout performance that had everything in spades

Guest Conductor Peter Oundjian led outstanding interpretations of three familiar pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov, Haydn and Bartók.

Two great pieces were on the programme for RSNO's first concert of the season: a delightful evening from the beginning to the end!

Spine-tingling moments in the Toronto Symphony's Mahler Three under Peter Oundjian. 

The heady combination of the Scottish première of James MacMillan’s Little Mass, Nicola Benedetti playing Szymanowski 2 and the drama of Berlioz Symphonie fantistique was an evening to remember.

A hard working concert from the excellent RSNO and Peter Oundjian, proved to be a very harmonious mix of mellow works by Messaien, Mozart And Bruckner.

Toby Spence and Sarah Connolly make splendid soulful companions and conductor Peter Oundjian brings a resonant depth to Elgar's period-piece in a fine end to the RSNO's season.

The challenges presented on this program, particularly Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, allowed the TSO to impress with their technical precision, ensemble cohesiveness and stamina.

Peter Oundjian and the RSNO perform an imaginative programme airing the varied moods and influences which make up modern America.

Peter Oundjian and the RSNO star in a celebration of orchestration, with guest Steven Osborne. 

Any performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony is a special event. This one was a thrilling end to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's season.

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Oundjian performed at Montreal’s Maison Symphonique in a well-executed and altogether comfortable programme which nonetheless failed to challenge any notion of orchestral status-quo.

RSNO music director Peter Oundjian conducted his orchestra in three contrasting pieces, joined for Beethoven's Emperor concerto by Nikolai Lugansky.

Conflict across the world pours into our homes through the immediacy of television, and we can now see harrowing images unavailable when Britten took up the commission to write a piece for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral in 1961/62.

There is more common than meets the eye to the three works on the programme by the St Louis Symphony Orchestra in the Powell Hall on Saturday night. The rhythmic diversity in each challenges the unity of the orchestra to the extreme.

There can be few openings which get as briskly down to business as Britten’s 1946 The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Peter Oundjian and the RSNO exploded into the minor-key Rondeau, which Britten had borrowed from Purcell’s 1695 Abdelazer Z. 750.

The adjective in the title of Britten’s 1934 Simple Symphony could refer to the ease with which listeners can spot each movement’s two contrasting themes. Attentive, lively use of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, colour enabled Peter Oundjian and the RSNO to make the most of young Britten’s diversity within impressive compositional unity.

In the second week of their 2013/14 season, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Peter Oundjian, presented three major works, beginning with two which were definitely not the same-old, same-old repertoire. The event positioned two English pieces as a stark contrast to the Russian one in the second half.Benjamin Britten never completed his clarinet concerto.

The Toronto Symphony’s 92nd season’s gala featured three works connected to operas, and who better to bring out the singing quality and dramatic storytelling of a piano score than pianist Lang Lang.

Peter Oundjian chose to open his tenth season as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony with a work he characterized as “ebullient”, and, truth be told, under Maestro Oundjian’s baton, it bubbled like a glass of champagne.Britten’s Variations and Fugue on a theme by Purcell (1946), a.k.a.

Pinchas Zukerman shares a category in my mind with Stevie Wonder. I recall seeing their names on so many LPs in my youth that they had been filed as being of a certain vintage. Investigation revealed both protégés to be much nearer my own age than I could have believed. In this performance of Bruch’s 1886 Violin Concerto no.

This evening’s Prom programme by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was ambitious in its musical and conceptual scale: one of the most demanding piano concertos in the repertoire, a fate-laden symphony, and as if that were not enough, an orchestral account of the beginnings of the universe.

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted”, says the scripture, and it was so last night as Peter Oundjian conducted the mournful music of Brahms and Lieberson. Wave after wave of the rich textures of grieving arose and subsided in song, leaving in their wake the energy of reconciliation.The grieving of Peter Lieberson is deep.

It’s rare to see a soloist perform two concertos in a single programme. RSNO Associate Leader William Chandler promised, in his highly entertaining and informative pre-concert talk, that we were in for some very exciting playing from pianist Xiayin Wang. Indeed we were.

As a teenager, I recall feeling how American classical music differed from European; its harmonies seemed as wide open as the plains depicted on film; its rhythmic freedom grabbed me viscerally. The same feeling obtains many years later and certainly did in this RSNO programme.

Although the Usher Hall was slightly less packed than for the inaugural concert of the season, there was a healthy crowd. If two concerts is sufficient to gauge an emerging format then Music Director Peter Oundjian’s preferred style seems to be to save welcoming remarks until after the opening piece, at which point he talks us through the evening as a whole.

If the presence of BBC Radio 3 and a huge audience occasioned any nervousness on the evening of Peter Oundjian’s first Edinburgh appearance as RSNO Music Director, it was well hidden. Weaving with boyish enthusiasm through the orchestra, a sporting spring in his step, he acknowledged the warm welcome before the orchestra dived into Glinka’s 1842 overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla.

The Shang Emperor of China had inscribed on his washbasin the admonition “Make it New”.Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s 2012/13 season made it new by including in its first-night program a work by a living composer, Harmonielehre by the American John Adams.

"Con Brio" is a term which demands excitement, strength, and enthusiasm. This evening‘s Toronto Symphony Orchestra New Creations Series concert was based upon exactly these concepts. To kick off the program, Peter Oundjian led the TSO through the Canadian première of Jörg Widmann's concert overture Con Brio. The timpani opened followed by brief grandiose chords.

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, playing for the first time in Edinburgh under Peter Oundjian as Music Director Designate, put together a very solid performance of works by Rouse, Grieg and Brahms.

L’Orchestre symphonique de Toronto prenait d’assaut la Maison symphonique en déployant un arsenal pour le moins impressionnant : Leon Fleisher (90 ans !) dans le Concerto pour piano n°12 de Mozart et la puissante Symphonie n°8 de Bruckner.

Le RSNO a clôt sa saison samedi soir avec un programme Beethoven/Strauss.