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Intimate playing from Sean Shibe, a deconstruction of Maria Callas’ vibrato and a deeply committed Boulez mid 20th-century masterpiece.

An affectionate Trout played by long-standing colleagues and friends from Royal Northern Sinfonia, along with Imogen Holst's Phantasy Quartet and Thomas Adès's fascinating Piano Quintet. 

Royal Northern Sinfonia welcomed their new chamber pianist in residence, Alisdair Beatson, with some brilliantly imaginative programming.

A patchy performance by The Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia in a concert following the influence of J.S. Bach on later choral composers.

The gut strings and period bows of the Chiaroscuro Quartet cast dramatic light and shade movements on from Bach's The Art of Fugue and quartets by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn.

Ian Bostridge and Lars Vogt bring their recital tour to Sage Gateshead, where they bring bold physicality to their interpretations of songs by Schubert and Beethoven. 

Royal Northern Sinfonia hide a feast of quirky, inventive string writing by Shostakovich, Stranvinsky, Mozart and Schoenberg behind a sedate title.

Great musicality from Royal Northern Sinfonia in deceptively simple Pärt and a fearsomely demanding piece by John Tavener.

Principals from Royal Northern Sinfonia showcase new music from even further North than Gateshead, with chamber works from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Estonia.

The OAE Night Shift team and their smartphone perform Purcell in a surprisngly formal setting at Sage Gateshead. 

A child's world comes magically to life in Ravel's one-act lyric fantasy L'Enfant et les sortilèges in a beautiful production by the young singers of Samling Academy.

The best Brahms chamber music our reviewer's ever heard from Royal Northern Sinfonia, plus a Sibelius quartet that needs to be be heard more.

James Gilchrist and Royal Northern Sinfonia conjure up the hills of Yeats' Ireland and Housman's Shropshire in a Late Mix concert at Sage Gateshead.

The Borodin Quartet put on a showcase display of pure, rich tone and superbly unanimous playing at Sage Gateshead but their Shostakovich lacked bite.

Count Keyserlingk, Ambassador to the court of Saxony, didn’t have Spotify to help him through his sleepless nights, but according to legend, he did have the funds to commission a piece from Bach...

By some miracle of suspended time, the Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia crammed a whole night of radiance into one glorious hour in their performance of Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil.

Laurence Cummings and Royal Northern Sinfonia present Bach's musical world in miniature in a programme of chamber music by Bach and his contemporaries.

Bach's Musical Offering with its intricate constructions may sound on the page like a dry exercise in contrapuntal wizardry but it dazzles the listener not just with its cleverness but with its soaring lightness and beauty.

Composer John Casken presents two of his own pieces, and works by his friends and mentors Toru Takemitsu and Witold Lutosławski in a Royal Northern Sinfonia Late Mix concert at Sage Gateshead.

Juliette Bausor and Alasdair Beatson give an exciting and versatile programme of music for piano and flute as part of the European Concert Hall Organisation's ECHO Rising Stars programme.

A disappointing performance of motets by Bach and Bruckner is rescued by an imaginative and evocative new work by John Casken, performed by Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia and flautist Juliette Bausor.

Royal Northern Sinfonia play chamber music by Beethoven, Schoenberg, Martinů and Dvořák in a programme travelling from passionate despair to playful high spirits.

Members of Royal Northern Sinfonia and John Reid take us on an intoxicating trip round the cafés of Central Europe with chamber music by Enescu, Martinů, Bartók, Dvořák and Kodály.

As Benjamin Britten’s centenary year draws to an end, Royal Northern Sinfonia began their own tribute last night, with a Late Mix chamber concert that drew on works from the start and end of Britten’s composing career, in a tightly planned programme full of pleasing connections. Throughout his career, Britten nurtured and supported younger composers, and so after Britten’s Op.

On Thursday night, I reviewed the vast forces of National Youth Orchestra, playing big colourful works by European exiles in 1930s America.

When I collected my ticket for this evening’s Late Mix concert in Hall Two of The Sage Gateshead, I was somewhat surprised to see it marked as unreserved seating. A computer glitch, I thought, until I walked into the hall and found that the usual rows of seats in this small, in-the-round auditorium had been replaced with café-style tables and chairs.

Like much of Shostakovich’s work, his popular Piano Quintet, Op. 57 (1940) is full of ambiguity and contradiction. It was written at the request of his friends in the Beethoven Quartet, who had so enjoyed his first string quartet that they asked him to write something new that they could play with him – but this private piece of chamber music was a huge public success.

Northern Sinfonia’s season of music by Brahms and Schumann opened on Friday night with the very public statements of their first symphonies, and the following night members of Northern Sinfonia turned inwards to the introspective and private world of their chamber music.Brahms was introduced to Schumann by the great violinist Joseph Joachim, and the three men were great friends.

The final concert in Northern Sinfonia’s summer chamber music series followed the pattern of the first two, sandwiching a lesser-known piece between two staples of the chamber music repertoire, and giving different groups from the orchestra the opportunity to step forward.

Early Romantic symphonies lie at the core of Northern Sinfonia’s orchestral repertoire, and so to hear different groups of their players getting together with pianist John Reid to perform chamber music by Schumann and Brahms seemed like the most natural thing in the world, an intimate, scaled-down version of one of their regular concerts.

Olivier Messiaen’s extraordinary Quatuor pour la fin du temps was written in a German prisoner of war camp, and first performed in the camp by Messiaen and his fellow prisoners on broken instruments.

In her opening words to this evening’s presentation of Kathleen Ferrier’s life and letters, Diana Moore said that Ferrier was an inspiration to every mezzo-soprano or alto who came after her, and despite its flaws, this concert was clearly a heartfelt tribute to a truly great singer, by one who has learned from her.

Continuing their Beethoven cycle, the Belcea Quartet gave us another selection spanning Beethoven’s string quartet writing, allowing us to see how Beethoven transformed the medium from its elegant beginnings through to the complexity and expressiveness of his final works.

It was hard to believe, listening to this evening’s Late Mix concert at the Sage, that three out of the four pieces played had in fact been substituted at the last minute after a soloist’s sudden illness meant that the original programme couldn’t be performed. Especially as all three pieces retained the spirit of adventure and exploration in which the Late Mix series specialises.

Percy Grainger, the Australian composer of Country Gardens, was a highly original musician, but is often overlooked. This year, however, to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Northern Sinfonia have put on several performances of his work, first at the Proms, and now a weekend of concerts at the Sage.

Two characters were already on the stage as the audience arrived in Hall Two of the Sage, clearly preparing for something. “Joe” wanders around in agitation, now mentally going over his lines, now raising his head and planning his declamation.

The members of the Belcea Quartet met at the Royal College of Music, but hail from across Europe - France, Romania, Poland and Switzerland, making me wonder which common language they use for working.