Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Le Poème de l'extase (The Poem of Ecstasy), Op.54

Karina Canellakis makes her debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a programme full of extremes. 

The LSO celebrate the breadth and vividness of orchestral colour, while Kirill Gerstein’s Ravel is a shade too reverential.

Centred around Scriabin’s mystical Poem of Ecstasy, a thrilling journey through the byways of twentieth century music takes in New Zealand, Finland and France.

Spanning over a hundred years, this highly charged, sensuous programme of López Bellido, Ravel and Scriabin proved that composers’ fascination with orchestral colours has not faded.

Karina Canellakis conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a programme of large scale repertoire to close the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival. 

Matthias Pintscher revels in Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy, once described as a “bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows”, while George Li plays Ravel. 

Continuing in his inaugural Seattle Symphony season, Thomas Dausgaard casts a gorgeous spell with Scriabin but is just short of truly thrilling in Stravinsky's Modernist icon. 

An orchestral program on the theme of ecstasy, religious and profane, included a piano concerto by James MacMillan along with works by Jennifer Higdon, Debussy, and Scriabin.

The LSO Futures season presented a programme of alternately effective, un-engaging and overpowering music at the Barbican.

Viotti will return to La Scala to conduct Gounod's Roméo et Juliette in 2020. The programme this time round gave an indication of some of the positive qualities to expect. It also warned of some potential pitfalls.

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra’s Prom with Daniel Barenboim went in search of identity and found ecstasy

Vasily Petrenko and the RLPO perform an all-Russian programme, with an exceptional Rite of Spring and charismatic playing from solo harpist Catrin Finch. 

A solidly brazen night from the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Valery Gergiev that ultimately lacked sincerity and depth thanks to its quick-fire delivery.

Powerful Romeo and Juliet and triumphant Scriabin from the Philharmonia and Salonen, with moments of excitement in Prokofiev from Lang Lang.

Released from the Covent Garden pit, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House enjoyed its moment on the stage, breathing in the sea breezes of Ravel and Chausson, strutting its stuff in Bernstein and basking in shimmering Scriabin.

An impressively balanced, but somewhat bloodless Schicksalslied gave way to intoxicating and seductive performances of Scriabin’s Poeme de l’extase and Third Symphony.

Magnus Lindberg's first work for solo voice proves an important new contribution to the genre, while Debussy, Wagner and Scriabin lack magic.

The theme to the evening’s programme at the Colston Hall was “The Power of Love”. Spread over a century, the three works programmed were all romantically driven.

It wasn’t only Mitsuko Uchida’s hands that were agile. Her arrival on stage was accompanied by the deepest bow imaginable, bending from the waist until she resembled a tuning fork. Such Japanese formality was paired with a warm, glowing smile and a real connection with players and audience alike.

Susanna Mälkki, current Musical Director of the trail-blazing new music specialists Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg in a concert showcasing two French impressionists’ love affair with Spain, Brice Pauset’s fascination with the symphony orchestra’s timbral spectrum, and Alexander Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.

If the graphic design of a concert programme can be said to shape our expectations of the event then the Philharmonia Orchestra’s 2012/13 booklet, on which the press verdict “blazing originality” is encircled by red-hot flames, had perhaps set its sights rather high. Thursday’s concert, however, did not disappoint.

Franz Welser-Möst’s programme was rather eclectic for this Carnegie Hall visit from the Cleveland Orchestra. Matthias Pintscher’s static, ethereal new work, Chute d’Étoiles (“Falling Stars”), found itself sandwiched between two of Beethoven’s busiest works, the Fourth Symphony and the Grosse Fuge, both of which are in the key of B flat major.

It isn’t often that the Musikverein programmes Webern, the most underperformed of Vienna’s major musical sons, alongside a Liebestod from Bayreuth’s reigning Isolde, but then this was no ordinary Musikverein concert.

The evening of dreams began an hour before the concert, with Entre-Temps for oboe and string quartet by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, an admirer of Debussy and a similarly ‘cinematic’ composer, with an ability to play with sound-colours which is alluring for film directors in search of atmospheres.

If I had the use of the TARDIS for one night, I'd head for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, May 29th 1913 – scene of the première of Stravinsky's, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).

Listening to an orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall is a bit like watching a gladiatorial contest between the orchestra and the hall. If the orchestra prevails, the sound comes through clean and well-defined. If not, the hall's giant size and booming acoustic turn the results to mush.

Nacho de Paz y la Orquestra de València inician el año con un exigente programa formado por obras de Scriabin y Messiaen. 

Un atractivo programa para una de las visitas de la temporada de Josep Pons, quien venía acompañado del pianista Nelson Goerner.

Pour ouvrir la saison 2022-23, Klaus Mäkelä a dirigé un programme original au sein duquel la création contemporaine occupait une place de choix : une audace qu'on aimerait voire reproduite !

Aufgepeitschte Finale bei Skrjabin, Rachmaninow und Dormans Mandolinenkonzert mit Avi Avital.

Trotz der kurzen Probenzeit spielten die Philharmoniker und Saraste in der Isarphilharmonie ein packendes Programm symphonischer Dichtungen.

Pour fêter la Saint-Valentin, l’Orchestre National de Lyon propose un programme d’œuvres intensément passionnées, les plus fameuses transportant à la découverte de l'extase.

Das BRSO und Paul Daniel setzten drei Werke aufs Programm, die jedes auf seine spezielle Weise extreme klangliche Welten erkundet.

Debut del director madrileño Pérez-Sierra ante la ONE con un programa que nos llevó del aquelarre en el Monte Pelado al éxtasis de las Piezas sacras de Verdi y la Sinfonía núm. 4 de Scriabin.

Orchester in Bestform, Solisten in intimem Zusammenspiel - man darf sich auf eine aufregende Konzertsaison freuen.