Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Sir Andrew Davis

The double choir triumphs in the MSO’s massive, mostly successful attack on an English choral masterpiece all too rarely performed in Australia.

A celebration of composer, soloist and orchestral excellence in an eclectic, if slightly eccentric, gala opening program to launch the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's 2018 season.

Two works of personal victory, written at virtually the same point in history and against a backdrop of suffering, made up this very successful concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. 

Sir Andrew Davis conducts the BBC Philharmonic in Elgar, Rachmaninov and Sibelius with pianist Kathryn Stott.

David Pountney's new production of Die Walküre for the Lyric Opera of Chicago incisively charts the tectonic shift of control over the future from Wotan to Brünnhilde.

A sensational Die Walküre from Sir Andrew Davis and the RSNO at the Edinburgh Festival that will be talked about for years.

Sir Andrew Davis led the BBC SO in a recreation of Sir Malcolm Sargent's 500th Prom, a lengthy programme that failed to inspire.

Outstanding solos, orchestral discipline and novelties in musical arrangement made for another quality symphonic experience from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The MSO and some suitably angelic singers deliver a remarkably bright, joyous interpretation of an already uplifting oratorio.

An account of The Beatitudes that will do much to reassess this neglected work was coupled with a polished “Enigma”.

Sir Andrew Davis also led superb performances of Delius’ Brigg Fair and Strauss’ Don Quixote, with Mark Kosower and Wesley Collins as soloists.

This production, directed by Tim Albery and with sets and costumes by Tobias Hoheisel, boasts more than one megastar.

In spite of some questionable staging, Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its Ring cycle on a strong note with a stellar cast, notably featuring Eric Owens’ role debut as Wotan.

A varied concert of new music by Anthony Payne, Max Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto with Ray Chen, a Tchaikovsky rarity and a rousing early work by Vaughan Williams

The interpretation was crowned by the most rapt rendition of the last movement imaginable, all yearningly luminescent and full of spellbinding nobility of tone from the orchestra.

Sir Andrew Davis conducted the RLPO in a programme of Mozart and Bruckner, with Esther Yoo as violinist in Mozart's “Turkish” concerto.

The coda to Juliet's "Convoi funèbre" crystallised all that was exceptional about this performance of Berlioz's symphonie dramatique.

It is the fusion of textures and styles coming from the pit that gives Bel Canto a memorable musical profile.

Love, light, levity, life. A joyful performance of Franz Lehár's Parisian operetta offers catharsis in troubling times. 

Bringing out the unabashed colour and detail of the score, Andrew Davis delivered a superb reading in the pit, tightly coherent and with exemplary attentiveness to articulation. 

Kissin's formidable take on Tchaikovsky's warhorse was a night to remember.

A star-studded cast headlined by Isabel Leonard and Lawrence Browlee share a hilarious production of La Cenerentola – complete with rat ballet corps!

A successful concert hall Rake's Progress at the Edinburgh International Festival with an impressively strong cast of singers, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Royal Conservatoire Voices under Sir Andrew Davis.

Delius resurrected, Wood introduced, Nielsen explored and thrilling Ravel at the BBC Proms.

Two classic scores by Berlioz and a musical memorial to Bliss’ brother made a deep impression. 

David Pountney's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger travels to Chicago. 

Amber Wagner sings Elisabeth with a deepened command and an access to a horizon of sound that make it seem as though her throat had found six more inches of release. It’s a phenomenal performance.

Only the slightest of quibbles with a fun, frothy new production of The Merry Widow at The Met. 

The Met's holiday special, Hänsel und Gretel, is a treat not only for young children but for adults with its sophisticated music, excellent singing ensemble and orchestra playing, as well as its witty production.

Late in the opera, in the calm that settles after a vaudeville of ballet dancers and Italian singers, Fleming’s poise pervades the Countess’s closing rumination over love and the nature of art. It’s a concert piece nestled in Capriccio’s narrative bustle, and to hear Fleming sing it is to be reminded of her talents as a communicator in music within and beyond the opera stage.

This production's consistent visual beauty forms the setting for this Don’s musical approach. It is a testament to this ensemble that Mariusz Kwiecień can’t steal the show in spite of his utterly commanding physical and vocal presence as the Don.

Under the baton of Sir Andrew Davis the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform for the first time at the BBC Proms, with mixed results.

A brave choice for a Proms season opener, but Elgar's ponderous score is presented in the best possible light by the BBC forces.

Sir Andrew Davis lead the BBC Philharmonic along “The Mancunian Way” and down to Salisbury Plain for Vaughan Williams' Ninth Symphony. 

Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius tells the story of a pious man’s death, his travels through Purgatory and finally being accepted into Heaven. It is perhaps not the most dramatic of tales, but one filled with a sense of redemption and intense spirituality. 

Amanda Majeski and Joyce DiDonato are exceptional as Vitellia and Sesto in David McVicar's production of La clemenza di Tito at the Lyric Opera.

Ana María Martínez takes on the title role as Dvořák’s nymph Rusalka in a new Lyric Opera production by David McVicar.

What is perhaps even more remarkable than the unabashed grandeur of the new Parsifal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago is the degree to which its spectacle draws on the images and genres of 20th-century media technologies including popular music.

The silence at the end of the concert said it all. To have plunged the attention of the entire Royal Albert Hall into utter silence for a whole minute after the music has finished was an impressive feat. Such was the audience response to Mark Padmore’s closing walk down the back of the stage, as Captain Vere.

It’s so good to hear Tippett’s ravishing opera, The Midsummer Marriage, performed in full at the Proms, particularly in Britten’s centenary year. Tippet’s work is like an antidote to Britten’s drier, more literal operatic style – so overflowing with warmth, colour and hope.

You can view Britten’s Billy Budd as an opera about the failure of words. When the angelic sailor Billy is falsely accused by his superior office Claggart, his stammer prevents him from defending himself and he lashes out, fatally.

RSNO concerts begin, for me and around 100 others, with the pre-concert talk. I'm especially glad of these when new to a work, such as Mendelssohn’s 1846 Elijah. A talk by those who have prepared the music for us adds something to even the most extensive “presearch”.

Friday night’s BBC SO concert certainly drew in a large crowd, despite the presence of two unfamiliar works: a new one by Jonathan Lloyd and Tippett’s Fourth Symphony from 1977. The addition of the ever-popular pianist Stephen Hough to the lineup, playing the one of the most challenging concertos in the repertoire, Brahms’ First, must have helped the numbers.

On Friday, a new co-production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg opened at the Lyric. The only comedy among Wagner’s mature music dramas, its sound is very much like that of the better-known tragedies – brassy, overfull, with a core of strings teetering at vibrato’s edge.

Canada has been taking an active role to build concert programs featuring its own musical talents. One proponent organization of this is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Led by a team of dedicated administrative individuals, volunteers and musicians, the TSO provides an indispensable platform to showcase our Canadian talents to the community at large.

In Francisco Negrin’s production of Massenet’s Werther, currently at the Lyric Opera, the opera’s first scene appears through a semi-transparent screen upon which an image of a row of houses is projected. Then the screen rises, and we enter fully into the dream.

Between acts, and between shows, the stage at Chicago’s Civic Opera House is usually blocked from view by a solid mural painted with baroque figures in gold – perhaps the gaudiest feature of an already fussily ornate hall. The gilt-painted screen was up, however, for Elektra, the first show of the Lyric Opera’s new season (along with Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, which runs concurrently).

The history of British music reads rather like the old joke about buses: there was no composer of note in the two hundred years after Purcell, and then three came along at once. Whilst Elgar and Vaughan Williams have become household names, the third composer who came along at the end of the nineteenth century has been relegated to the dusty shelves of musical history.

The gist of Ariadne auf Naxos, Richard Strauss’ opera-within-an-opera, is this: a demanding patron insists on having his entertainment for a given evening – a burlesque act and an opera – combined into one work, greatly upsetting the archetypal “serious artist” composer of the opera.

“Once Upon a Time…” No doubt, this has become one of the most familiar lines of childhood. Indeed, what childhood would be complete without fairy tales and fantastical stories of knights, princesses, dragons, and talking animals? Even into adulthood, fantasy and fairy tales continue to capture the imagination of many.