Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Symphony no. 9 in D minor, WAB 109

Scintillating Mozart meets soul-searching Bruckner as Anja Bihlmaier and the NSOI deliver a programme of vivid contrasts and compelling musical storytelling.

Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic enthral at the BBC Proms with magical accounts of Bruckner's last symphony and extracts from Berg's Lulu Suite.

Bucharest’s temples of culture present rites of closure by Mozart, Kurtág and Bruckner… and a fleeting glimpse of Nirvana.

The CBSO gives a vivid account of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, its structural and emotional convolution laid bare, and an athletic account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 26 featuring Martin Helmchen. 

Montreal's Orchestre Métropolitain launches its season with a Bruckner Ninth that includes both an orchestral introduction and a choral finale. 

Alexandre Kantorow dazzles in Liszt’s Piano Concerto no. 2, against Bruckner’s mighty, unfinished Ninth Symphony. Manfred Honeck and the Philharmonia win new friends for both composers.

David Fray's mannered Bach is a let-down, but Karl-Heinz Steffens brings out the spacious majesty in Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. 

The Vienna Philharmonic and Franz Welser-Möst open a trio of concerts at Carnegie Hall. 

The Ninth forms a satisfying sequel to the conductor's mastery of the Seventh, marked by rhythmic spring and sonic splendour. 

Camille Pépin's Le Sommeil a pris ton empreinte, a violin concerto dedicated to Renaud Capuçon, receives its German premiere. 

Now in its 23rd year, the festival offers a broader perspective on its namesake's influences and music as this program by the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and Paavo Järvi demonstrates. 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin combines the composer's unfinished Ninth Symphony, Te Deum and the motet Christus factus est to create an ultimate realization of religious faith and artistic expression.

Forensic musicology has its limits: controversy will continue to surround any new attempt at providing a convincing conclusion to Bruckner's final symphony.

In the first of two appearances to close the Elbphilharmonie's summer festival, Franz Welser-Möst and his doughty Clevelanders don't stint on discipline and power in Berg and Bruckner, but leave the listener emotionally short-changed.

Alpesh Chauhan and the BBC SO assay Bruckner's final symphonic statement, while Stephen Hough once more demonstrates his affinity for a Romantic composer like Rachmaninov.

Some last-minute changes in the programme undermine the success of a promising evening at Santa Cecilia.

All life is a preparation for death, as revealed in Messiaen's Et exspecto and Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. Zubin Mehta and the Berlin Philharmonic administer the exequies.

The Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala prove perfectly suited to bringing out the Rossinian influences in Schubert. 

A programme built on a pair of unfinished symphonies drew variable performances spanning the pedestrian to the powerfully grandiose.

Rattle presented small items full of flavour alongside a heaven-storming Bruckner Ninth Symphony.

Eschenbach’s command of the orchestra shone most in the Adagio of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, where the climaxes brought out the full gravitas of the work.

In Wagner and Bruckner, Daniele Gatti is proving to be a great standard-bearer for one of the world’s greatest ensemble’s traditional values

Gatti and the Concertgebouw produce ravishing beauty in Bruckner 9; Rihm's In-Schrift fails to convince.

Bernard Haitink and LSO forces explore contrasting aspects of two late works by Bruckner.

Andris Nelsons conducts Bruckner's Ninth symphony, while Paul Lewis plays Mozart.

An evening of heavy-hitting, late Romantic symphonic and operatic repertoire by Bruckner and Wagner that was rich in artistry, if a little overwhelming for some.

Bach in morbid mood and valedictory Bruckner brought to life by young musicians under the baton of Philippe Jordan

In the final weekend of season, Muti led the CSO in a divinely inspired Bruckner Ninth, fittingly paired with the Te Deum.

Up and Coming American James Feddeck makes an impressive CBSO debut in a programme of familiar works.  

Sir Andrew Davis conducted the RLPO in a programme of Mozart and Bruckner, with Esther Yoo as violinist in Mozart's “Turkish” concerto.

Two composers at the opposite end of their careers form an interesting pairing but one that doesn't quite add up to a convincing whole. 

Two strange bedfellows – Penderecki and Bruckner – brought together in the acoustically awkward, if architecturally spectacular surrounding of St Pauls Cathedral by Daniel Harding and the LSO as part of the City of London Festival.

The Philharmonia, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Christoph von Dohnányi explore swan songs of Richard Strauss, in his 150th anniversary this week, and Bruckner at the Royal Festival Hall. 

Yordan Kamdzhalov's final concert as GMD Heidelberg presents Alina Pogostkina in a glowing performance of Vasks' Distant Light, and shines in Bruckner 9 with reconstructed finale.

Lisa Batiashvili joins the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin for smooth, suave Bartók, but Bruckner's Ninth doesn't quite cohere.

Despite the accolades heaped upon the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle’s performance and recording of this version of Bruckner’s 9th symphony with its unfinished finale, performances worldwide remain few and far between.

The conductor raised his baton to embark on the fourth movement – there was some slight disturbance in the hall. He lowered his hands and waited. He raised the baton again and waited. When silence was absolute he gave the sign for the timpanist to sound the pianissimo, misterioso drum roll that ushers in this extraordinary movement.

The London Symphony Orchestra presented the themes of the first movement of Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto very nicely indeed, benefiting from the clarity, moderation and wisdom with which a lifetime of experience has endowed their conductor for this concert.

Few concert programmes can feature such different works based on the same inspiration, but the BBC Philharmonic managed the intricacies of Bach and the grandeur of Bruckner with great success. The biggest tragedy of the evening was the audience: the whole top tier of seating was closed, and the stalls were barely half full.On his appointment as Kantor of the Leipzig Thomaskirche in 1723, J.S.

Beethoven's music in general, and the Fourth Piano Concerto in particular, is on the cusp between the Classical and the Romantic: the Classical forms are stretched to their limit but left unbroken, while Beethoven provides plenty of opportunity for a Romantically-minded interpreter to charge off in any number of wild directions.

The Vienna Philharmonic has received a mixed reception at the Proms in recent years, but this programme of Beethoven and Bruckner with Murray Perahia and Bernard Haitink, which was performed in Salzburg this weekend and tours to London next week, will be sure to be met with critical approval.There were however moments during the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no.

Extraordinary things happen in St Barnabas Church, Ealing. On a couple of occasions, 32 pianists have played 32 Beethoven piano sonatas over one weekend, and every so often the building is host to Ealing Symphony Orchestra, who dare to embark on programmes that feature works you just will not hear anyone else perform – first public performances of Ives’ Orchestral Set no.

Nestled in the north of Bavaria lies the small medieval town of Bamberg. Despite its small population of just 70,000 people, the town boasts not only a wonderful concert hall, but one of the best orchestras in Germany.

Returning after an absence of twelve years, Sir Simon Rattle—in his apprentice years back in the 1980s the orchestra’s principal guest conductor, now arguably the most well known and respected conductor of our day—led the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Thursday night after an absence of twelve years.

After performing the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies of Anton Bruckner on Monday and Tuesday, Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin took no rest, but travelled to Paris to perform the Seventh and Ninth Symphonies in the Salle Pleyel to keep themselves occupied on Wednesday and Thursday.

Münchener Symphoniker is one of four professional symphony orchestras based in Munich, and although perhaps less well known than the Philharmoniker or the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, they are able to hold their own amidst the stiff competition.

The Adagio of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony differs in several ways from its predecessors, one being that its climax is built on its most grief-stricken and agonised theme. The rising D major trumpet motive that might have delivered a glorious vision at the summit seems forgotten, and instead the wrenching leap of a ninth that opens the movement is piled up into a massive dissonance.

Before the concert began, Yannick Nézet-Séguin gave a short introductory speech that, in effect, would have the Royal Festival Hall consecrated for the evening as a place of worship.

When Bruckner died in 1896 he had done much work on his Ninth Symphony and the finale was almost complete. Unfortunately the executors failed to secure Bruckner's rooms, nor did they ensure that the finale manuscripts were delivered to the Imperial Library. So many pages are missing, and those that do exist are in many locations world-wide.

This evening’s programme of Messiaen and Bruckner ought to have come with a health warning beforehand – caution: not for the fainthearted. Following on from Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration last month, the LSO’s programming seems to be continuing in a similar vein, with this concert united by the theme of death and religious conviction.