When it was announced from the stage that Gustavo Dudamel would not be conducting due to a "family emergency," the orchestra played for Conducting Fellow Stephen Mulligan as if he were a maestro.
Tinney delivers an intelligent, sensitive account of Beethoven's Piano concerto no. 5 while German conductor Alber stresses speed over subltety in Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.
Igor Levit gave a splendid account of Beethoven's Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major, and a performance of Brahms' Second Symphony was played with enthusiasm by the visiting NDR Radiophilharmonie.
In the recently refurbished Suntory Hall, looking remarkably fresh with a newly refitted wooden stage, the Boston Symphony sounded elegant and sumptuous.
Joshua Bell and the stupendous Academy of St Martin in the Fields entertained us through powerful music, not through any showmanship or bravado - a welcome change in this Trump-age.
The RCO marked the investiture of Daniele Gatti as its seventh chief conductor with a sampler programme featuring Mahler, opera, and an expansive, glittering version of Respighi’s Fountains of Rome.
At 89, Blomstedt may now be in the autumn of his years, but his conducting is certainly the equivalent of Ol' Blue Eyes' “vintage wine from fine old kegs”, as evidenced in tonight's splendid all-Beethoven Prom with the Gewandhaus.
Kazuki Yamada combines Japanese deference with full control of his players to lead he CBSO to fine performances of Beethoven and Sibelius, with a relatively laid back performance of the Elgar Cello concerto.
Before the NY Philharmonic even arrived in San Francisco, skeptics were complaining about the 'hackneyed" repertoire they were bringing on tour. But there was nothing commonplace about their interpretations, power, technical skills or performances.
The monumental sound and the forcefulness in character that Gustavo Dudamel manages to imprint on the orchestras he has conducted has been long discussed. It is almost a signature; a revolution in an orchestral world more generally interested in what is correct and traditional.
Lars Vogt came blazing into his new job as Music Director of Royal Northern Sinfonia, creating an instant impression with his luxuriously expressive Beethoven and Brahms.
Sunshine bursts forth as Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra, featuring pianist Nikolai Lugansky, in a Sunday matinée concert of Beethoven and Mendelssohn at the Southbank Centre.
Romanticism found both its source and its end at Salle Pleyel on Tuesday night: Beethoven’s Egmont overture, incidental music for a heroic drama written by Goethe, and his Fifth Symphony, where it has been said that “Fate knocks at the door” – both works composed before 1810 – and Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, created in 1948, when the last notes of Romanticism in music history wer
In its sixth season, the Zurich International Concert Series has attracted some well-known, but less-heard orchestral names to London. The series enables the full force of orchestras to be heard in the relatively intimate space of Cadogan Hall, which is otherwise famous for attracting chamber ensembles of the highest calibre.
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.
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.
Though often played with far greater forces, the Beethoven and Mendelssohn played in this concert were well suited to the small size and immediacy of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Directed energetically from the leader’s chair by Joshua Bell, they gave crisp and clear performances which highlighted the chamber-style aspects of these works.
Osmo Vänskä strode onto the stage to great applause, paused for the slightest of moments and then lunged at the orchestra with his baton. The gesture was sudden and lacked clarity, and as a result, the first note of the Prom wasn’t together in the strings.
Three separate standing ovations answered the first concert of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra's London residency, in which they played Beethoven and Britten with all of their trademark joie de vivre and panache.
Can a concert have ever been so eagerly anticipated? In 2006 Richard Holloway, then chair of the Scottish Arts Council, went on a fact-finding visit to Venezuela to look at El Sistema, where intensive classical music tuition in schools and the formation of orchestras has developed a successful track record of transforming attitudes in desperately poor and violent communities.
The air was thick with excitement in the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday night. Strangers turned to talk to each other and every conversation seemed to be about Pinchas Zukerman: their first Zukerman experience, favourite recordings and how far they had travelled to see their hero.
Programme de raretés à la Philharmonie : Michael Sanderling dirigeait pour la première fois l'Orchestre de Paris, dans les Jedermann de Franck Martin et la Dante-Symphonie de Franz Liszt.
Autour de la figure beethovénienne, l'ONCT recevait le chef danois Thomas Søndergård, habitué des grands orchestres européens et nord-américains et promoteur du répertoire scandinave, ainsi que le jeune virtuose tchèque Josef Špaček.
Bei Mozart zeigten sich die Qualitäten des Ensembles: eine ausgezeichnete Darbietung, virtuos, oftmals dramatisch und spannungsreich, zumal im Hauptthema des Eingangssatzes.
Die Rotterdamer Philharmoniker unter Yannick Nézet-Séguin eröffneten ihre Konzertsaison mit Janine Jansen und einem beeindruckenden Abend mit Britten und Beethoven.
Con el empaste orgánico y la complicidad construida concierto a concierto desde 2011, el tándem BBC-Mena vibró, bailó y estremeció. El torrente sonoro cuidó hasta el menor recoveco de pentagrama, cuajando el mejor de los augurios para lo que resta de festival.
