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

Maxim Emelyanychev and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra offer a Baroque-inspired programme of Bach, Handel, Britten, a modern take on Scarlatti and wonderfully zany Schnittke.

Following his acclaimed 2025 all-Russian recital at Carnegie Hall, the young Canadian pianist returns with a wide-ranging, imaginative program spotlighting his virtuosity and elegance.

Fretwork bring the expected and the startlingly unexpected to Sheffield in a revealing evening of music for viol consort. 

The CBSO’s Birmingham’s Town Hall matinee sets forth a curious mix of Baroque, Classical, and modern music, sandwiching a lesser-known concerto between some familiar tunes.

Jean Rondeau’s anniversary tribute to Louis Couperin reveals a refined but inward-looking aesthetic – beautifully controlled, yet ultimately lacking the rhetorical energy, physicality, and communicative spark essential to this music.

Guth’s Semele turns myth into a contemporary domestic drama, where desire becomes obsession and illusion consumes reality. Handel’s music remains the true engine, driven by a thrilling, physically intense ensemble.

Cavalli’s Messa concertata and Venetian polychoral masterpieces shine in Berlin’s Philharmonie, with a heartfelt, immersive New Year’s experience of ritual grandeur and warmth.

The Dunedin Messiah, a speciality with Baroque instruments, is given with soloists Nardus Williams, Lotte Betts-Dean, Joshua Ellicott and Dingle Yandell in Perth, directed by John Butt.

Ensemble Masques brings French Baroque to life at the Elbphilharmonie, with Olivier Fortin’s radiant harpsichord, spirited strings and vivid interplay revealing the expressive richness of Couperin, Rameau, Forqueray and Corrette.

Vox Luminis bring radiant Advent performances to northern Germany, filling Hamburg’s winter evening with joy, clarity and winter-firewood charm.

Leonardo Garcia-Alarcón leads a crisp, charismatic account of Rameau's Les Indes galantes, where a superb cast shines and the Cappella Mediterranea thoroughly convinces.

In ‘The Eloquent Oboe’, Tekla Cunningham and colleagues draw out the quiet drama in solo Bach cantatas – where the oboe’s sigh becomes the soul’s own speech.

From Bach to the American Minimalists (and some of their friends and acquaintances) on Shani Diluka’s journey in search of transcendence.