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

Kristiina Poska makes a successful Toronto debut with solid Beethoven and some spicy Caribbean fireworks from Stewart Goodyear. 

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert, tipped for European touring next year, fails to convince.

Thomas Adès serves up an astronomical programme, pairing his Piano Concerto and Paradiso with Holst’s crowd favourite, The Planets.

John Adams returns to Toronto to conduct the TSO in an exciting and varied programme marked also by the debut of Spotlight Artist Anna Prohaska. 

Gustavo Gimeno kicks off the TSO’s new season with new perspectives on the familiar and not-so-familiar

Japan’s leading composer conducted a programme that mixes concert and film music, but it was only the familiar tunes that enthuse the audience.

Gustavo Gimeno and the Toronto Symphony stir the emotions with a caring and dedicated performance of Mahler’s longest symphony.

French conductor Stéphane Denève leads the Toronto Symphony in an invigorating French-American programme, featuring Canadian star violinist, James Ehnes. 

The TSO effectively combine new and old with a first rate performance of the enargeia suite by Emily D’Angelo, followed by a satisfying Brahms First Symphony. A fitting tribute to dedicatee Sir Andrew Davis.

Gustavo Gimeno leads the Toronto Symphony in a programme of absorbing musical abstraction and storytelling, let down by a banal new trombone concerto.

Osmo Vänskä’s visit to the Toronto Symphony brings an outstanding, dramatic new concerto from Detlev Glanert, while familiar masterpieces by Grieg and Sibelius spring to life with vivid freshness. 

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

Despite the hype surrounding the star pianist Daniil Trifonov, it was the TSO under Gustavo Gimeno who stole the show.

Young Russian maestro Maxim Emelyanychev makes his Toronto Symphony with a dip into Russian imperial ballet. 

David Robertson makes a successful debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, substituting for Michael Tilson Thomas, in a hyper-romantic programme of Berg and Mahler.

Trevor Wilson conducts Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Copland and Wijeratne in the TSO's tour of a century of tonalism.

Spanning over a hundred years, this highly charged, sensuous programme of López Bellido, Ravel and Scriabin proved that composers’ fascination with orchestral colours has not faded.

The TSO’s opening concert promises a season of style and ideas, but it’s Gustavo Gimeno’s uncompromisingly raw Rite of Spring that offers the evening's pièce de résistance.

Gustavo Gimeno, Marc-André Hamelin and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra raise the roof with Messiaen’s epic – and eclectic – Turangalîla-Symphonie.

They may have come out for the Mozart, but it is the boldly programmed Britten and Mazzoli that make this midwinter concert stand out. 

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

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

English conductor Nicholas McGegan led a responsible reading of Handel's now-classic oratorio, infusing some dramatic and lyrical touches into a largely unruffled evening.

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

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

“Things found here are the opposite of what they are meant to represent,” warned Thomas Dausgaard at the opening of Saturday evening’s performance pairing Beethoven and Nielsen. 

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra offered a rich performance of works by Holst, Shostakovich, Grieg and Marquez. Conductor Robert Moody brought out the lyrical side of the orchestra, even if its members were nearly over-shadowed by an over-enthusiastic soloist.

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.

Who could ask for anything more – Ignat Solzhenitsyn joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a concert of Mozart, featuring the 39th Symphony and the 18th Piano Concerto, which Solzhenitsyn conducted from the keyboard.

James Gaffigan advised the audience about to hear him conduct Witold Lutosławki’s Piano Concerto to back off like you would from an Impressionist painting, in order to get an impression of the whole. When you do so, it’s a very romantic work. Otherwise, the score resembles ‘a science experiment’ because parts of it are notated without bars and cannot be conducted.

As the audience assembled in Roy Thomson Hall on Wednesday, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Members of the orchestra were taking their seats on the stage, getting ready to tune their instruments. However, anyone paying close attention to the setting would have seen a fixture hanging high above the stage.

If there were a Nobel Prize for violin, I would nominate James Ehnes. His playing of Britten’s Violin Concerto with the Toronto Symphony was drenched with emotions – pathos, irony, lamentation, sarcasm, tenderness and bliss – displayed and at the same time bounded by the discipline of his virtuosity, that like a diamond, radiated brilliance without attracting attention to itself.

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.

“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.

“What makes Mahler’s music like opium,” I once got asked. If you enjoy listening to lush melodies and pompous brass calls in fine Wagnerian traditions, or get stimulated sonically by a large orchestra, you have got a foot in the door.

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.

Four years ago, Maxim Vengerov suffered a shoulder injury that temporarily incapacitated him as a performing violinist. After four years of recuperation and in his one-night-only appearance in Toronto, Mr Vengerov took on a dual identity – as a violin soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and then as a violinist–conductor in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

It was a year ago at the Jane Mallett Theatre when the 24-year-old French pianist Lise de la Salle made her Toronto debut in a solo recital of Debussy, Liszt and Ravel. That recital was a sensation and left lasting impression in the hearts of many Torontonians.

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.

February 2nd’s Masterworks Concert saw the return of two iconic figures to Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. Günther Herbig, TSO music director from 1988-1994 was warmly welcomed back to Toronto to lead the orchestra through the week’s concerts. Pianist Anton Kuerti was also greatly received by the audience, making his 40th appearance with the TSO.

On December 1st, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra welcomed guest conductor Andrey Boreyko to guide them through a journey of "Russian Gems." Boreyko made his debut with the TSO in October 2003 and has had a prolific career through guest conducting and as a music director.

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.