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Leif Ove Andsnes joins the Vienna Symphony in the Musikverein's Golden Hall for a glowing account of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto before a terrific Tod und Verklärung. 

Jan Lisiecki joins Petr Popelka and the touring Wiener Symphoniker at the Concertgebouw for Grieg's Piano Concerto. 

Herheim’s Fledermaus is a risky experiment that, miraculously, works – at least in a city that knows it so intimately.

In a week where Vienna welcomes two new productions of Bellini's Norma, MusikTheater an der Wien sets a high bar with Vasily Barkhatov's staging. 

At the Bregenz Festival, director Philpp Stölzl gives us a radical updating of the classic, with an interpretation many miles away from Weber.

Anna Goryachova and Mélissa Petit shine as doomed lovers Tancredi and Amenaide, while Jan Philipp Gloger's contemporary setting has much to offer, but doesn't quite nail the landing.

Erich Korngold and Arnold Schoenberg – Viennese emigrés in Hollywood – formed the unlikely pairing in the Ukrainian conductor's Konzerthaus programme. 

There is magic aplenty in director Stefan Herheim’s bold recontextualization of Gian Carlo Menotti's holiday opera. 

Herheim’s maiden voyage in his new capacity as Intendant confirms his ability to deftly negotiate a less-than-straightforward work with care and ambition and add his own voice enthusiastically to the mix.

Kavakos’ restless approach was haunting, and during the cadenza he pared back his sound till it was nearly transparent, stopping breaths as we all leaned in. 

An all-day Beethoven experience European style with both highs and lows: much diversity revealed and exploited but of variable quality.

Argerich sprinted through technical runs with her characteristic articulation and breathtaking technique, and made Prokofiev's Third seem like child’s play.

All the light, tuneful melodies and tuttis of the Ninth Symphony are still somehow Shostakovich, but a Shostakovich during a rare period where he seems to be taking antidepressants.

Here was the much-loved three-act opera Rigoletto, yes, but chances are, it was one far beyond Verdi’s wildest dreams.

What a day to hear an all-French programme, and with this fragile moment at its heart criticism feels futile, disrespectful even.

It is all very easy on the eyes, although pondering what it is all supposed to mean is a recipe for a migraine.

Osborn absolutely lives the part; he negotiated formidable heights, intricate passage work and the sheer volume of notes with style and clarity as well as colour and nuance. 

If Beethoven referred to his own compositional approach as “redend” (speaking), then Levit speaks him clearly, beautifully and fluently.

An unusual programme at the Musikverein, drawing together works by Mendelssohn, Brahms and a piano concerto by Britten. 

After Jan Lisiecki gave an immaculate interpretation of a perennial Mozart piano concerto, Sebastian Weigle revelled in the brassy bravura of a symphony which remains virtually unknown in the city where it was composed over a hundred years ago.

Without glitz, extravagance or the need to be expressly shocking, Robert Carsen's new production of Wozzeck at the Theater an der Wien is exceptional.

The Dvořákʼs Prague festival wraps with four Prague alumni showing why they've gained international fame.

This summer’s production of Bizet’s Carmen on the Seebühne stage in Bregenz offers a great spectacle. 

Bronfman attacked the concerto with alacrity and a capacity to draw sound from the piano which was breathtaking.

In the first and last sections dance themes and virtuosic solo work bustle about, playing with percussive elements and darting  from thought to thought like a child whirling elatedly through a festival

Jurowski is a wonderful conductor to watch. He carves shapes through his bearing and gesture cleanly, and his indications are crisp and defined - yet he retains poetic fluidity through his hands at all times.

The Ravel G major piano concerto is in fact a mind-bogglingly virtuosic pianistic endeavour requiring fingers of steel and trills of satin.

Bach is music for the soul, and when excellent musicians are performing it, it cannot fail to be beautiful. Thanks to the considerable strengths of the many involved, there is really no better way to spend a weekend in Lent than lamenting through a Bach Passion in the Konzerthaus. 

Every operatic ingredient was thrown into the pot for H.K. Gruber's Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Tales from the Vienna Woods), but do too many cooks spoil this operatic broth?

Just when we were all having so much fun with the Symphoniker, mum and dad came home and ruined the party.

Giving the audience closer access to performers may be a key to the survival of an ever-more-elitist entertainment form

Though Jordan and the Wiener Symphoniker have been happy bedfellows many times before, this concert marked the beginning of a new stage in their relationship. 

Musical magic has more to do with chemistry than it does with mathematics, and this evening fell considerably short of magical despite a devil’s share of ability, talent, competence and energy

A percussion concerto tribute to natural disasters and a dark snapshot of post-Stalinist Russia make for a compelling programme from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Krzysztof Urbański and soloist Martin Grubinger. 

Schubert's unfinished oratorio Lazarus joined with other interesting works by both Schubert and Charles Ives in a staged performance at the Theater an der Wien, directed by Claus Guth. Strongly cast, the musical juxtaposition works better than the oratorio itself, and the rather cold dramaturgy.

Maria João Pires plays Beethoven Piano Concerto No.2 with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Adám Fischer. Haydn and Mozart top up a Viennese evening.

The night got off to a very classical, Viennese start when Vladimir Fedoseyev took the stage of the golden hall on Saturday night at the Musikverein.

Iain Bell’s new opera A Harlot’s Progress, premièred at the Theater an der Wien this month, has much going for it. Its chances for making it into modern repertory are good – if people can handle the depressing plot.

Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder are not performed often, and one reason involves simple logistics. Not only is a professional orchestra of gigantic proportions required, but also five soloists with Wagnerian voices, a narrator, an eight-part mixed chorus, three four-part male choirs, and a conductor crazy enough to try to keep some 400 musicians from going off the rails.

Entering a standing-room-only hall on Tuesday evening in the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Leonidas Kavakos calmly made his way to center stage, hugged the concert master, smiled at the orchestra and then cued the beginning of Mozart’s Violin Concerto no. 3 in G major, which he both played and conducted.

With the business situation in the recording industry being what it is, studio recordings of operas are more or less ruled out. The positive side of this is that the general public gets the chance to be part of concerts that are recorded and enjoy the tension such an event creates more often.

The great jazz composer Bob Brookmeyer used to instruct his students that they should never write a solo section in their composition until it was absolutely inevitable that a solo should take place.

Institutional violence has been a running theme in Torsten Fischer’s series of Gluck operas at the Theater an der Wien, albeit with a lid kept firmly on the idea of actual conflict.

The venerable Viennese tradition of airing dirty operatic laundry in public found an unlikely proponent this season in the form of the Theater an der Wien’s mild-mannered director Roland Geyer, who, unhappy with William Friedkin’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann in March, abruptly sacked the American director and announced he would devise a new staging himself a matter of months before the sec

The Wiener Symphoniker has suffered recently from more late conductor cancellations than most orchestras, and things reached a peak last season when their chief conductor Fabio Luisi pulled out of a string of engagements in order to substitute for James Levine at the Met.

Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet has riled and infuriated ever since its 1868 première, though for many it is merely an object of derision: one 1869 correspondent to the satirical magazine Punch admits not having seen the work but nevertheless disparages it as ‘Omelette’, a musical ‘burlesque’, and pillories Thomas’s fondness for drinking songs with the lines ‘To drink or not to drink? That is now the que

Director William Friedkin doesn’t put a dramaturgical foot wrong in his Theater an der Wien production of The Tales of Hoffmann and yet doesn’t challenge, or even engage with, any of the opera’s Romantic positions.

Tradition has it in Vienna that while the Wiener Philharmoniker ring in the New Year to the strains of the Blue Danube and other Strauss family hits, the Wiener Symphoniker give festive performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Konzerthaus.

The Italian conductor Fabio Luisi has become an increasingly familiar and welcome face to New York audiences. Recently appointed Principal Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he is primarily known here as an operatic conductor.

Après un Concerto pour deux pianos K365 de Mozart idéal sous les doigts de Lucas et Arthur Jussen, l'orchestre viennois et son directeur musical ont déçu dans la partition monumentale de Richard Strauss.