Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Má Vlast (My Country)

The effervescent conductor took six little-known Czech works into another ether: one in which the footprints are invisible.

Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, gives a performance of perhaps the most famous of Bedrich Smetana’s works, a romantic tribute to his motherland, Má vlast.

Big names brought a big sound but not much else to the traditional performance of Smetana's Má vlast.

The Pittsburgh Symphony under Jiři Bělohlávek gave a rare performance of Smetana's complete cycle of tone poems.

The Czech Phil's all-Czech programme showed them off in resplendent form.

The Cleveland Orchestra's two Slavic programmes form part of a larger Polish thread woven into this year's EIF. Witold Lutosławski's 1954 Concerto for Orchestra struck me as an ideal opening to the first concert. Its reliance on folk tunes, collected from the Masovia region (north of Warsaw) by ethnographer Oskar Kolberg, assures an unmistakably Polish flavour.

Tonight's Prom gave the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiří Bělohlávek, the chance to showcase two masterpieces from his homeland, with the first half comprising the ever-popular Cello Concerto No. 2 by Dvořák and the second half, Smetana's epic cycle of symphonic poems, Má Vlast. The latter work, surprisingly, received its first complete Proms' performance this evening.

Un rush hour rutilant au Victoria Hall vendredi soir, dont le joyau fut certainement le hautbois somptueux d'Alexeï Ogrintchouk !