Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Le Corsaire, Op.21: Overture

Antoine Tamestit takes a peripatetic approach to Byron's brooding hero, while Joyce DiDonato dies – twice – as Cleopatra and Dido. 

With a Francophile programme of Berlioz, Chopin and Franck, conductor Fabien Gabel had the constant challenge of exploring the orchestra for fresh insights into each of these Romantic works.

Roth bookended Matthias Pintscher's new work with familiar pieces, Berlioz’s Le Corsaire Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 in F major.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, was joined by pianist Alexandre Tharaud, presenting strong performances of familiar French composers.

It may have been an absolutely freezing night in Poole but the BSO treated us to a heart-warming evening of life-affirming music, world-class music-making.

One of the pleasures of the BBC Proms is to survey the current state of our regional orchestras and I was really looking forward to the Hallé's visit with Mark Elder. Yet, at the end of the concert, I felt curiously unfulfilled.

This seemingly disjointed program from Jacques Lacombe and the Orchestra Symphonique de Montréal included music by Berlioz, Dvořák and Ravel, in addition to a new work by Serge Arcuri: all voyages of complementary but fundamentally different kinds.

Tonight’s Orchestre de Paris Prom was very much a concert of two halves, in the first of which they got to show their sensitive, introspective side, reflecting on the nature of life and lamenting too-early death, then becoming considerably more extrovert in the second for some free-spirited buccaneering, and what the programme notes describe as “vivid, prolonged and grand noise”.

The concert by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (OSM) on Monday concluded its 2011/2012 season, the first in its new home at the Maison Symphonique de Montréal.The evening got off to an upbeat start with Berlioz’s Le Corsaire overture. As a composer of overtures, Hector Berlioz may well have been the torchbearer for the Beethovenian tradition.

I had never heard any of the music scheduled the evening’s performance and so I was excited by the prospect of the all-French programme, featuring composers whose music I am particularly fond of.

Sous la direction de Fabien Gabel, l'Orchestre national d'Île-de-France défend avec brio le répertoire français, de Berlioz à Roussel, et sert d'écrin au timbre merveilleux de Karine Deshayes.

Pour accueillir Sir John Eliot Gardiner et son Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, l’Opéra Royal de Versailles a reconstitué le décor d’un « concert monstre » donné par Berlioz il y a 170 ans.

Bizet, Ravel et La Tragédie de Salomé de Florent Schmitt à l’honneur au Festival Musique française

Sonya Yoncheva et Saimir Pirgu ont eu pour mission de clore l'édition 2016 des Chorégies d'Orange. Une mission perilleuse ! 

Si l’on ne doute pas que les programmes prévus pour les 3 et 5 mars sous la direction du chef napolitain auraient fait merveille, Emmanuel Krivine ne s’est pas contenté de sauver les meubles, et a assuré, avec humilité et maîtrise, un concert tout à fait mémorable.

L’orchestre symphonique du Forum National de la Musique à Wroclaw donne un concert passionnant, plein de rebondissements sous la baguette du japonais Eiji Oue.