Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Symphony no. 4 in E flat major, "Romantic", WAB 104

Stepping in for Kirill Petrenko, Daniel Harding conducts the Berlin Phil's “army of generals” in an unfussy Bruckner Four, while Tabea Zimmermann plays Schnittke's Viola Concerto.

The whole performance, which drew thematic parallels between Mozart and Bruckner, was a master class in eliciting more with less.

It was a pleasure to hear the Vienna Philharmonic in Herbert Blomstedt's deeply-invested nonagenarian's view of music he has been performing for nearly seven decades.

Forget powerhouse “hojotohos” and sandblasting brass. Elīna Garanča and Christian Thielemann offered more intimate portraits of these composers at the Großes Festspielhaus.

Andrew Manze conducts the RLPO in a performance of Bruckner in which beauty was always kept to the fore

The venerable Herbert Blomstedt conducts a spirited programme of works by Mozart and Bruckner in Zurich’s provisional concert hall, the Tonhalle Maag.

Haochen Zhang, Thomas Dausgaard and the Singapore Symphony impress in Mozart and Bruckner.

Native sons Samy Moussa and Andrew Wan combine their considerable talents for a sensational world premiere of a violin concerto that was commissioned by the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

DiDonato shines as Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads his OM in the final concert of its US tour, ending with blockbuster Bruckner. 

Andrew Norman's composition sustains interest alongside a powerful Bruckner 4 from Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic.

Nicola Benedetti provides all the fireworks in an understated outing by Neeme Järvi and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra.

Bruckner for the non-Brucknerian: the Philharmonia plays the Fourth with Schubertian delicacy at the Royal Albert Hall. 

On the cusp of the Summer Solstice, Sir Simon Rattle, the LSO and suitable orchestral reinforcements celebrate the heritage of folk music and the attractions of rusticity.

Bernard Haitink conducts an extraordinary account of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony. 

Thomas Søndergård's Bruckner sound with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra leaves one hungry for more.

The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, with their Dutch-Maltese conductor Lawrence Renes and the British soprano Emma Bell, embrace the cause of Wagner and Bruckner in the heart of the Mediterranean.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin's final tour as Chief Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic brought out the tender side of Bruckner and Liszt. 

The New Zealander Heldentenor makes a welcome return to Auckland for Wagner's erotic song cycle. 

Fabio Luisi led The Cleveland Orchestra in Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony, prefaced by a recently composed piano concerto by Sciarrino with Jonathan Biss.

Mahler had Walter, Mitropoulos and, most importantly, Bernstein to champion him in the US. Bruckner was never as fortunate... until now. When Andris Nelsons succeeded James Levine as Music Director of the Boston Symphony, he specifically mentioned Bruckner as a composer he would program regularly, in marked contrast to his predecessor’s antipathy.

A concert marked by stylish playing that brought fresh colour to Debussy, virtuosity to Bartók and energy to Bruckner.

William Bolcom's Concerto Grosso is flanked by two Austro-German masterpieces in an inspired "Three B's" program led by JoAnn Falletta.

The CBSO's former music director returns to his old stomping ground for a programme that mixed a Romantic staple with an austere 20th-century work.  

A fine account of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony was let down by the choice of the original version of the score, whilst Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 1 saw some idiosyncratic playing.

Blazing Bruckner, but low-key Mozart from Daniel Barenboim and his Berlin Staatskapelle in the first of three Proms pairing the two composers this week.

The RCO under its newly appointed chief conductor Daniele Gatti give a gripping programme of Romantic music. Soloist Gabetta impresses tremendously as well. 

The NSO ends their season with a fullsome Bruckner's Fourth Symphony. 

Conducting entirely from memory, Herbert Blomstedt and the Philharmonia gave a rousing performance of Bruckner's Fourth and Mozart's 39th.

Both guest artists of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s concerts this week appeared in Australia for the first time: the octogenarian Christoph von Dohnányi and the versatile violinist, less than half his age, Carolin Widmann. The great German conductor must feel a certain pride in his ancestry, as he kept the Hungarian spelling of his surname.

Delicate Mozart from Maria João Pires makes up for an aggressive Bruckner 4 from the LSO and Daniel Harding. 

Yuri Temirkanov chills Felix Mendelssohn and Anton Bruckner symphonic fire with Russian sensibility at the MITO Settembre Musica festival inaugural concert

A pairing of a concerto and symphony from two giants of the 19th century in sensitively shaped performances.

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Chief Conductor Mariss Jansons fell just short of excellence in the first concert of their residency at the Barbican, with Bruckner's 4th Symphony alongside Mozart's G Major Violin Concerto (with Frank Peter Zimmermann).

A grave and weighty “Jeunehomme” from Emanuel Ax, and after a Romantic first movement, Haitink and the Berlin Philharmonic power through Bruckner's Symphony no. 4 in E flat major.

Tunbridge Wells Symphony concert success with Aleksandar Djermanović's last minute Chopin and Bruckner's Romantic Symphony masterfully conducted by Neil Thomson.

There are (at least) two moments in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2 where the music extends the language taken from Haydn and Mozart and reaches out into new worlds. Both were handled to great effect by tonight’s soloist, Christian Ihle Hadland.

Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts occupies the site where once stood the Pensionnat Héger, the school where Charlotte and Emily Brontë lived during their sojourn in the Belgian capital – an appropriate setting, as it is not difficult to imagine Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony underscoring one of the sisters’ Gothic tales of unrequited love.

Herbert Blomstedt brought the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester to Birmingham for the ninth of their eleven-concert, two-week Easter tour. Their magisterial account of Bruckner’s Romantic Symphony, and a fine performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto by Leif Ove Andsnes, earned them a vociferous reception.

Franz Welser-Möst misses few opportunities to declare his affinity with Anton Bruckner. The conductor, after all, is from Linz in Upper Austria, and Bruckner was born twelve decades earlier in a village just outside the same town. From London to Vienna, Welser-Möst has believed it necessary consciously to advocate for Bruckner’s music.

The citizens of Birmingham were queueing up at the door when I arrived in good time for this concert, and the hall was nearly full when the concert began. All seats were unreserved and at the same price wherever you sat – an arrangement that has always appealed to me.

The level of anticipation for Saturday’s Oxford Philomusica concert was high, although not necessarily for the reasons you might expect: several minutes passed after tuning before the concertmaster emerged from the wings of Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. Although the Sheldonian may be somewhat lacking acoustically, the building’s grandeur more than makes up for it.

Sometimes an eagerly awaited performance starts out brilliantly, more or less how you thought it would, but then it kind of fizzles out towards the middle, only to return with a vengeance at the end. This was more or less the case with Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic this Thursday.

Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs hold an important place in the musical canon for voice and orchestra. The 81-year-old composer wrote them in 1948 from his post-war home in Switzerland, setting poetry by Hermann Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff.

Muffled up in a heavy coat, scarf and gloves, your intrepid reviewer travelled through the wild heart of the East End of London, from Whitechapel on the Overground, under the Thames to the equally rough and grubby realms of south-east London, to Brockley, making his way up the hill in the wintry darkness to St Peter’s Church.

Principal Guest Conductor Markus Stenz joined the Hallé for a programme of richly romantic music in nature and name, from the impassioned chromaticism of Tristan and Isolde to the peaks and valleys of Bruckner. Stenz seemed to shirk away from easy heroism all evening, opting instead for softer and harder-won resolution.

Janine Jansen’s performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto carried all before it: she played with such passion and commitment, with such seaching beauty and endless variety of tone, it left the orchestral contribution seeming somehow colourless and inadequate to the occasion.

When this deeply thoughtful account of Bruckner’s 4th Symphony came to its end I was reminded of a line from Bob Dylan’s song "It ain’t dark yet, (but it’s getting there)" on his album Time Out of Mind, where he sings, "I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still.

There is a remarkable story about Portugese pianist Maria João Pires and a Mozart concerto, which she was due to perform with Riccardo Chailly in Amsterdam. The orchestra played the opening bars of the D minor concerto; however, this was not the one Pires was expecting to play. Miraculously, Pires continued to give an assured performance, revealing her extraordinary musical capacity.