Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Flow, my tears (Lacrimae Pavane)

Hespèrion XXI dazzle us with virtuosity as they celebrate musical Europe in the heart of Westminster.

Julius Drake, Krzysztof Chorzelski and Mark Padmore contributed their notable gifts of piano, viola and voice respectively in a very special, often heartfelt fundraising evening for two music education charities. 

An evening of English repertoire at King's Place where the pleasures were flecked with disappointments. 

There comes a stage in every countertenor’s career when he feels himself ready to tackle the exposed repertoire of John Dowland, and hence the need to find himself a talented lutenist.

This year'sHeidelberg Bach Week is entitled "Bach +"; in a concert called "Flow my tears", Ensemble Riverberi played works by J.S. Bach and English and Italian contemporaries.

The intimate Vancouver Playhouse was nearly full to hear Iestyn Davies and Thomas Dunford. Consisting of lute songs by John Dowland and his contemporaries, in addition to the Canadian premiere of Nico Muhly’s Old Bones, it’s hard to imagine a more artistically satisfying and entertaining way to spend an afternoon.

Amidst the furore of celebrations for the anniversaries of Verdi and Wagner, the final Chamber Prom of this season gave pause to savour the music of the great English Renaissance lutenist, singer and composer John Dowland, whose 450th birthday also falls this year.

A near capacity audience gathered at the Wigmore Hall last week to celebrate another English musical anniversary – not the birth of Benjamin Britten one hundred years ago, but that of lutenist and composer John Dowland, some 350 years earlier.

The ability of musicians to take music from the past and present it in a new way gives an important sense of continuity that holds together our musical tradition, and this applies equally to performers and composers, as demonstrated this evening by Northern Sinfonia and their young guest conductor Ilan Volkov, in Hall One of The Sage Gateshead.

Frequent concertgoers in our modern age will be all too aware of the irritation factor of mobile phones going off during performance. The King’s Singers, however, make a feature of the phenomenon and take it to another level. This world-class ensemble delighted a packed Hereford Cathedral, the closing concert of their 2011/12 season coinciding with the Three Choirs Festival.

On February 2, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society produced its first-ever solo lute recital, featuring Hopkinson Smith. The concert took place in the intimate Benjamin Franklin Hall at the American Philosophical Society, allowing audiences to enjoy the subtle sounds of the instrument.