Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod

Wagner’s suspended longing, Sibelius’ continuous transformation and Beethoven’s expansive rhetoric unfold with clarity and purpose. 

Jakub Hrůša leads the CSO in pedestrian Janáček and Rachmaninov, but Strauss's Four Last Songs and Wagner's Tristan excerpts send audiences home deeply touched.

Celtic legends and dramatic landscapes fill Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in an evening of emotional and reflective music under conductor Nicholas Carter. 

Leonidas Kavakos joins the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for an evening of Hollywood glamour and lush Romantacism. 

Debutant conductor Thomas Guggeis filled out the programme with a creation of his own – a fusion of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Meistersinger.

A great RSNO season debut from conductor David Niemann, with impressive Wagner and a searing Pathétique Symphony. 

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

Winding up his inaugural tour with the BRSO, new Chief Conductor Sir Simon Rattle delivered a superbly performed program of Wagner, Adès and Beethoven. 

Sensory overload? Color takes centre-stage in Scriabin's synaesthetic Poem of Fire and Anna Clyne's Color Field. 

Gerts conducts a sublime Brahms 4 while Carol McGonnell gives a lively rendition of Stanford's Clarinet Concerto in A minor. 

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

Pull out all the stops and blow through all the pipes: the mighty organ is there to be celebrated! Olivier Latry demonstrates his mastery of the art.

The Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai impresses in “bleeding chunks” from Wagner operas at the Festival de Pâques d'Aix-en-Provence.

Excerpts from three stageworks by Wagner, Barber and Tchaikovsky are performed in a magical and enchanting sequence in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. 

Ludovic Morlot conducts the RSNO in a relationship that blossoms into love... eventually.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's beautifully curated selection of Mann-themed music enjoys mixed success. 

Ahead of Valentine's Day, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal presented a concert centered on “symphonic love”.

Karina Canellakis leads the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Wagner and Strauss with style and sophistication.

The HK Phil display virtuosic brilliance in an energetic rendition of Shostakovich’s witty Symphony no. 9 under Jaap van Zweden

The War of the Romantics – Brahms v Wagner – from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Nathalie Stutzmann, followed by an energetically powerful Mozart Requiem with the BBC National Chorus of Wales on fine form.

Music Director Ludovic Morlot placed an emphatic Fortissimo ending on an eight-year tenure that has placed the Seattle Symphony on the global map.

In the second of the two concerts this week to open the Philharmonia's season, Salonen excels in the Schoenberg, while leaving space for debate in the Bruckner.

Jonathan Bloxham steps in for a presumably unwell Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla with the CBSO in Cardiff. 

Jaap van Zweden returned to the CSO with a probing account of Brahms’ German Requiem, along with shorter but no less moving works of Mozart and Wagner.

Mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux made her Cleveland Orchestra debut in a passionate performance of Chausson’s Poème de l’amour et de la mer.

A decadent romantic programme of Wagner and Mahler, where Nathalie Stutzmann delivered a scintillating performance particularly in Wagner's Prelude.

A superlative Berg Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos makes up for disappointing Schumann from Gatti. 

Swedish soprano Miah Persson dominates the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s enterprising Romantic Lieder program conducted by Kent Nagano.

Jaap van Zweden and Hong Kong Phil's Der Rosenkavalier Suite full of swagger, sarcasm and humour

Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Yannick Nézet-Séguin score personal triumphs with l’Orchestre Métropolitain in their first concert together in thirteen years.

In his 2011 book Verdi and/or Wagner, currently doing the rounds in libraries across the UK for obvious reasons, Peter Conrad devotes the best of 400 pages to essentially draw all sorts of divisive lines: the sensual Italian song versus the cerebral German symphony; the radically different conceptions of tragedy (“Tragedy in Wagner is an act of will […] Verdi’s characters, unlike Wagner’s, would p

After a concert last week made inaudible by thunder and a very heavy rain storm, The Cleveland Orchestra and its music director Franz Welser-Möst returned to Blossom Music Center this past Saturday in much more auspicious circumstances – a gorgeous, warm, non-humid evening – for a generous helping of excerpts from the operas of Richard Wagner, in celebration of that composer’s bicentenary.

This concert, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth, opened with that composer’s most influential phrase – the beginning of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde wherein the Tristan chord, which is reputed to have had such an unsettling effect on the harmonic language of all who followed, first stole upon the ears of 19th-century music lovers.

It’s Richard Wagner’s bicentennial year, and everyone is getting in on the act. 22 different productions, by one count, of the complete Ring cycle will be seen worldwide, not to mention countless other celebratory evenings put on by sundry ensembles.

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.

On 29th September 1973, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performed an all-Wagner program in Sydney’s Opera House. This was the first concert ever heard in this most iconic of concert halls.

This was potentially a very nice programme which frustratingly only rarely lived up to its promise.First on the programme were the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, the iconic bookends of Wagner's most revolutionary work. The Prelude lacked the extraordinary tension and atmosphere it can have, though the climax was powerful throughout.

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.

This wasn't just another concert. It was Liebestod, a truly unique exploration of Berg's Lyric Suite. Berg's piece is a compelling work, whose mysteries were only revealed about twenty years ago when the composer's letters to his lover Hanna Fuchs-Robettin were released. Both were married, and the relationship was fraught with secrecy.

Widely acclaimed professional community orchestra New Philharmonic opened its 34th Season with an outstanding, family-friendly concert featuring both overture classics and everyone's favorite musical fairy tale, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf.

Bei ihrem zweiten Zürcher Auftritt kombiniert Stutzmann Wagner mit der Ersten Symphonie von Brahms. Das Tonhalle-Orchester setzt alle Vorgaben der Dirigentin mit großer Selbstverständlichkeit um. 

La música de Helmut Lachenmann protagonizó el primer concierto de abono de la Orquestra de València.

Les habituels pensionnaires de Radio France ont donné à la Philharmonie une grand-messe wagnérienne qui, malgré le miracle Miina-Liisa Värelä dans le rôle d'Isolde, ne s'est pas révélée transcendante.

Dans le cadre de son festival de l'Offrande Musicale, David Fray propose un récital original à travers les époques où le piano se fait le relai du clavecin comme de l'orchestre.

Que ce soit dans la musique française ou dans le répertoire wagnérien qui fait partie de son ADN, l'orchestre dresdois se montre éblouissant sous la baguette de son directeur musical.

Passionnants dans des extraits de Tristan et Isolde et Parsifal de Wagner, Les Siècles se manquent sur le piano choisi pour les concertos de Liszt, ce que Bertrand Chamayou ne peut pas compenser.

Peu après la « désinvitation » du Festival de Flandre qui a fait grand bruit, le chef et l'orchestre ont reçu le soutien appuyé de la direction et du public du Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

Im Reigen der weltbesten Orchester stellen auch die Münchner ihr Licht nicht unter den Scheffel. Und Lisa Batiashvili beeindruckt in Beethovens Violinkonzert mit einer eigenständigen Interpretation. 

La Orquesta Sinfónica de la Radio Sueca ofreció un excelente concierto bajo la dirección de Daniel Harding.