Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews

A splendid recital by Armenian cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan in King's Place's "Cello Unwrapped" series pays tribute to Russian cellist Anatoly Brandukov. 

Holten's masonic lodge setting of Meistersinger gets a lot right but is occasionally uneven; Terfel and Hughes Jones are constantly good to listen to.

We all know of Casanova, the lover; now, we have a Casanova to love

BBCSSO and Richard Farnes’s special chemistry in a night of British music. Thoughtful Butterworth and noble Elgar and  Lawrence Power joined the forces for a wonderfully spirited performance of Macmillan’s Viola Concerto.

The Trisha Brown Dance Company's "In Plain Site Los Angeles" demonstrated how dance can beautifully reflex the art and sculture surrounding it.

Sakari Oramo returned to Symphony Hall to lead Sibelius' Symphony no. 3 in C major and Busoni’s rarely performed, grandiose Concerto in C for Piano, Orchestra and Men’s Chorus with Kirill Gerstein.

Russian pianist Kozhukhin's performance of Rachmininov's Fourth Piano Concerto is the highlight of the evening but Flor and NSO deliver satisfying Dvořák and Boydell. 

Lantratov played Onegin with considerable nuance and intensity.

Maliphant has achieved a unique movement style and a highly collaborative artistic direction, largely built upon instinctive cooperative understanding with long-term partners 

In this concert, conducted by Simone Young, featuring works by Hungarians, Bartók and Eötvös,  the colour and virtuosity of both pieces was presented with an extra tingle factor.

With a convoluted production and uneven cast, Tamás Pál in the pit and Klára Kolonits as Erzsébet Szilágyi prove to be the highlights of the performance of this Erkel classic.

A double bill of variable quality, Aakash Odedra shines in Aditi Mangaldas’ new piece
Echoes, but struggles to find his choreographic foothold in I Imagine.

Director Jo Davies' staging of Mozart’s dramma giocoso for Nederlandse Reisopera is a high-spirited  affair packed with humour, where the emphasis is decidedly more on giocoso than on the dramma.

A high-minded approach to Bach's masterpiece is undercut by an uneven performance.

Netrebko's Violetta is now fuller in body and voice than in her former incarnation. Goodbye to the fresh-faced damsel we saw in Salzburg; hello to a larger-than-life courtesan in her twilight years.

Pinchas Zukerman never quite gets to grips with Elgar's concerto, and the Berlin Philharmonic take a while to get to the heart of Tchaikovsky's Fifth. 

It was here in Manchester, only a stone’s throw from the modern Bridgewater Hall, where Hans Richter gave the first – and by all accounts, highly acclaimed – performance of Elgar’s First Symphony.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto received a successful world première with Yo-Yo Ma and the Chicago Symphony, the composer conducting, richly complemented by works of Adams and Stravinsky.

Collins gives a scintillating performance of Bach and a highly expressive account of Schubert, Schumann and Chopin.

The closest that dance theatre comes to the "Hammer" House of Horrors!  An imaginative, macabre, grotesque and colourful double bil. 

On a program with unusually slow tempos in Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony and Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides, Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter gave a cursory performance of Mendelssohn's First Piano Concerto.

Set to Frank Moon’s moody, thematic score, the curtain rises on a foggy night scene as a shiny black stretch limousine glides onstage—the real deal, dazzling to behold, like a noir film come to life.

The Stockholm Concert Hall hosts the Göteborg Symphonic Orchestra and Opera Chorus for a concert performance of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Music, singing and movement blend together in a powerfully moving double bill of French Tragedy, Les Malheurs d’Orphée and Le Vin herbé  at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.   

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra lit up Zurich’s historic Tonhalle with a stellar double-bill of Mendelssohn and Mahler.

McGregor delivers a mighty concept through strong leadership and teamwork; creating art, through movement, that possesses both complexity and depth, yet unfolds with arresting clarity.  

Paul Taylor American Modern Dance is getting ready for the transition to the time when it will have to go on without its founder and creative spirit.

With combined ages of over 150 years between conductor and soloist, there was no lack of experience on the platform for this Royal Philharmonic Orchestra concert.

Two experimental dance companies from Turkey and Australia brought intriguing, cerebral work to the Hong Kong Arts Festival. 

In Gute Pässe, Schlechte Pässe (Good Passports, Bad Passports), Helena Waldmann joins the disparate artistic genres of modern dance and acrobatics to reflect divisions among ethnic groups.

The American cellist unlocked a corporeal vault –thus shining light on musical internal organs that we never knew existed.

The Sydney Dance Company is a great company, not just a good company.

It’s all there: flashy extensions whipped into ecstatic heights, bravura speed and precision, intricate entanglements of dancers, whimsical wit and the loving nod to an adulation of Woman.

Concerto Italiano excels performing Baroque music, especially the works of Monteverdi. This year it highlights L’Orfeo in its 410th year, and does it exceptionally well.

Valery Gergiev's late withdrawal meant Marios Papadopoulos, music director of the Oxford Philharmonic, stepped into the Russian's shoes. 

Kay Link's new production of Handel's pasticcio Oreste is surprisingly strong theatrically, often musically too. 

Tara Erraught offered a programme that combined well-known arias with obscure German Lieder, showing off a voice strong in technique and colour that left the audience wanting more.

Is the very, very good the enemy of the great? It is hard to fault a performance as fine as this – except perhaps against a benchmark no longer recognised.

Mozart's Idomeneo proved to be a challenge for some of the soloists initially but the superb orchestra under James Levine brought about a successful opening evening at the Met.

American composer Jake Heggie's early opera performed by Washington National Opera was one of those rare experiences of an opera full of raw power and wrenching emotion with superb performers that one is not likely to forget soon.

In Los Angeles, Patricia Racette was an impressive Salome but the orchestra was, as it should, the main character.

Catherine Foster returns, in the Ruhr, to the role of Isolde with Torsten Kerl in a new production of Tristan und Isolde .

Blanche McIntyre's new production for ETO proves a disappointment, saddled with a trip hazard of a set. 

Yaron Traub dirigió una potente y dramática Segunda de Mahler al frente de la Sinfónica de Bilbao y con la soberbia intervención de las solistas María Espada y Ainhoa Zubillaga.

The Northen Chamber Orchestra bring small-scale but energetic accounts of Beethoven, plus Anthony Gilbert's intriguing Another Dream Carousel to the Heritage Centre in Macclesfield.

Few composers have made such a notable impact in setting the St Luke Passion narrative, and this impressive performance under an inspired Vladimir Jurowski made clear its relevance today.

Christian von Götz's production doesn't all work, but he makes a viable, thought-provoking and entertaining show out of Weber's spooky classic.

Washington National Opera continues its cycle of social justice operas.

Messiah butchered and trivialised in Sydney performance

The Venezuelan maestro conducts a programme of early 20th-century works with the BBC Philharmonic .