Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Symphony no. 4 in C minor, Op.43

Shostakovich proves the highlight of a variable programme in Rotterdam. 

Shostakovich’s sprawling Fourth Symphony filled the rest of the concert in an epic performance.

Blistering Shostakovich crushed Rachmaninov in this uneven pairing, the London Philharmonic’s latest exploration into “Rachmaninoff: Inside out”. 

When leaders of their sections perform a concerto with their Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, it generally leads to an evening of excellence.

At Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, John Storgårds led the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in performances of Sibelius’ Rakastava, Nielsen’s iconic Clarinet Concerto and Shostakovich’s ground-breaking Fourth Symphony.

One Prom + two oddball 20th century symphonies = a strangely satisfying experience, especially when in the hands of a youth orchestra, evidently open to the technical challenges and quirkiness of this relatively rare concert material.

Continuing their Shostakovich cycle, the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev brought the Fourth and Ninth Symphonies to the Salle Pleyel, as well as the Concerto for Piano and Trumpet, with pianist Daniil Trifonov.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 9 and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 4 are pieces of music from completely different ends of the spectrum. The lightness of the concerto is not to be found in the monumental symphony, and the only common point is that both pieces were written by the composers at a very young age (Mozart was 21, Shostakovich 24).

Among the brilliant programming of The Rest is Noise festival in London, there was one concert this year that stood above all the others for me: the European première of Shostakovich’s opera prologue Orango. First discovered in an archive in 2004 by scholar Olga Digonskaya, Orango was never finished by Shostakovich, and indeed only a piano score remained.

The last concert in Rotterdam Philharmonic’s “Russian Fall” series centered around one of the most monumental Russian symphonies ever written: Shostakovich’s Fourth. But the evening opened with something completely different: Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 2.

Simon Rattle dirigierte seine Berliner Philharmoniker am letzten Tag der Salzburger Festspiele mit Ruhe und Gelassenheit zu einem wohlartikulierten Britten und transparenten Schostakowitsch. 

Lang Lang spielte Tschaikowskis Erstes Klavierkonzert mit dem Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Der Star des Abends war aber eindeutig Dirigent Andris Nelsons.