Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Thomas Zehetmair

Patriotic Sibelius and early Mendelssohn are served up at the Glasshouse in Gateshead. 

The Oxford Philharmonic offers uninspiring renditions Bach and Mendelssohn, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of the orchestra under the baton of Christoph Eschenbach. 

Thomas Zehetmair and the Royal Northern Sinfonia perform overlooked as well as well-known masterpieces.

Thomas Zehetmair plays Beethoven's sole violin concerto in Seattle before conducting lively Mozart with a Bohemian flavour. 

Philippe Herreweghe reveals a crisp and precise Philharmonia in Schubert’s Fifth Symphony as Thomas Zehetmair provides reflection and breadth in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.

Violist Ruth Killius did double duty as page turner and violist with violinist husband Zehetmair in knockout Britten.

Royal Northern Sinfonia's popular Conductor Laureate Thomas Zehetmair makes a well-received return visit to Sage Gateshead, with symphonic music ranging from an exquisite jewel by Webern through to a fizzing performance of Schubert's "Great" Ninth.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s music was the starting point for this year’s Ultraschall Festival, marking what would have been his 100th birthday.

Luscious orchestral and choral sounds bring Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé to shimmering life.

The beginning of Prom 23 was utterly surreal. I found myself confronted by sounds I had never heard before in a concert hall.

Hall One of Sage Gateshead was packed for a characteristic Thomas Zehetmair programme, with Mozart, Bartók, a world première and a trademark Beethoven symphony to mark the end of his tenure as musical director of Royal Northern Sinfonia.

The Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia do battle with Beethoven's monumental and challenging choral masterpiece.

Thomas Zehetmair brings out all the ochestral detail of Bach's masterpiece, creating a beautifully approachable and engaging St Matthew Passion that goes straight to the heart of the story.

One of the challenges facing performers, and listeners, of Britten’s music is the availability of the superb recordings that Britten made, often with the musicians for whom the music was written; performers have to take guidance from the recordings without slavishly imitating them, and us listeners (and reviewers even more so) have to be alert to the danger of making comparisons.

Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poems Les Illuminations are strange fragments of visions that can mean anything or nothing, depending on the attitude of the reader.

Starting a concert season with two works with Requiem in the title might sound rather gloomy, but not when one of them is Brahms’ beautiful, consolatory German Requiem, and particularly not when it’s placed in the hands of Thomas Zehetmair, who unfailing brings out the warmth and humanity of Brahms’ music from the musicians of the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

After Simon Rattle blazed into the Philharmonie last week with big hits like Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass, and (somewhat less of a big hit) Lutosławski’s Second Symphony, Alan Gilbert, normally to be found on a podium in front of the New York Philharmonic, returned with the same band on Thursday to play lesser-known pieces in the repertoire: Janáček’s violin

Northern Sinfonia ended their 2012/13 season this evening with the final stop in their journey through the symphonies of Brahms and Schumann. This cycle has got better and better as it progressed, ending this evening in a concert that was a beautiful mixture of lightness and depth, exquisitely shaped by their conductor Thomas Zehetmair.

The day after Valentine’s Day, and Hall One at The Sage Gateshead was filled with love – the love between an orchestra and their conductor, and the love that all the musicians on the stage felt for the composers they were playing, in this their third concert of a Brahms and Schumann double symphony cycle with conductor Thomas Zehetmair.

Schumann and Brahms are linked together by their great friendship, their musical influences on each other, and, of course, by Schumann’s wife, Clara, who was one of the most important people in Brahms’ life.

Northern Sinfonia’s concert in Hall One of the Sage Gateshead last night challenged the audience to put aside our normal preconceptions, to see well-known composers in a slightly different light. Mendelssohn’s “Fifth” Symphony was actually the second one he wrote – at the age of only 20 – but it was not published until after his death and is not played as much as his other symphonies.

There was a sense of celebration in the air at the Sage Gateshead, as the Northern Sinfonia orchestra and chorus began their tenth season under the direction of Thomas Zehetmair with an all-Mozart programme. The hall was full, and before welcoming Zehetmair to the stage, Sage General Director Anthony Sargent had a bit of fun showing off Hall One’s fancy new multi-coloured lighting effects.

A piece of music written by a dying composer, left unfinished and completed by a dedicated friend from the chaotic fragments left behind. This is not just the story of Mozart’s Requiem, so familiar to many from Peter Schaeffer’s colourful retelling in Amadeus, but also of Bartók’s Viola concerto, which was imaginatively paired with the more well-known Requiem by Northern Sinfonia this evening.

Le Concerto pour orchestre du compositeur polonais a bénéficié de la direction très convaincante de la cheffe et de l'application des musiciens de l'ONL, après une première partie moins aboutie avec Thomas Zehetmair en soliste.

Dans un programme Grieg-Schumann-Beethoven, l'orchestre a montré ses qualités d'écoute et de couleurs, avec un soliste particulièrement inspiré.

Thomas Zehetmair assume une direction audacieuse non sans frôler la Chute.