Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Les Illuminations, for soprano or tenor and strings, Op.18

Karen Kamensek, Gabriella Reyes and the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center turn in a sporadically satisfying performance at Summer for the City. 

Czech tenor Petr Nekoranec adds luster to a performance attuned to troubled times.

American soprano Julia Bullock offered an impassioned, impeccably sung interpretation of Britten's Les Illuminations, bookended by elegant Ravel standards.

Manze and the orchestra evoked with accuracy the shifting moods and the underlying tensions that mark the score of Les Illuminations.

After its Covid-19 “Quarantine soirées”, the Budapest Festival Orchestra celebrates the end of lockdown by taking on a two-concert international tour!

Aurora Orchestra prove too muscular for accompanying voices in Wigmore Hall, but Stephenson's setting of Rimbaud's poetry is impressive.

Artificial intelligence shows it can write music, but human composers need not worry – not yet, anyway.

An intriguing programme of Britten, Walton, Barber and Copland provided dynamism, evocative imagery and new discoveries in Juanjo Mena’s valedictory concert with the BBC Philharmonic.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra also have a winner in a radiant Vaughan Williams Symphony no. 5.

An evening of exceptional originality and daring in Snape Maltings – not to mention glorious music – got the Aldeburgh Festival off to a striking start for the 2016 season.

Michel Plasson returns to l'Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in a program of French music and Karina Gauvin resplendent in Britten's Les Illuminations. It was an object lesson in how to capture the essential essence of French music. 

In the programme notes to the Guildhall production of Journeying Boys, writer and director Iain Burnside reveals that the original idea behind the play came from Nick Sears, the Royal College of Music’s Head of Vocal Studies. It’s hard to know whether that disclosure was a giving of credit due or a disclaimer.

Barbican Britten: Phaedra is just one of the events in the venue’s two-week celebration of the composer’s centenary. The programme presents four pieces choreographed by Richard Alston to Benjamin Britten’s music. Alston’s choreography is well suited to Britten’s music: both artists are lyrical, tempered, and incline toward narrative.

When the nights get longer and the temperatures begin to drop, one of the best ways to cozy up is with a good concert of chamber music. I Musici de Montréal and conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni presented “The Night Transfigured”, a program of works inspired by night to warm audiences at Bourgie Hall on Friday evening.

Arthur Rimbaud’s prose poems Les Illuminations are strange fragments of visions that can mean anything or nothing, depending on the attitude of the reader.

The orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and its conductor-in-chief, Donald Runnicles, made an appearance above stage level this week, performing a program of concert pieces at Musikfest Berlin a week before the opera season takes off.

In last night’s Prom 51, Daniel Harding conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme that was partially planned by Colin Davis and was due to be conducted by him.

“Bring it on”. This was the response of Nicholas Sears, Head of Vocal Studies at the Royal College of Music, when Iain Burnside sketched out his plan for a music theatre event that would almost certainly cross boundaries of taste.

Pleasantly enough, Britten Sinfonia went down a thoroughly unconventional route in celebrating their 20th birthday at the Barbican on Saturday, with a brilliantly varied range of new pieces mixing with chamber orchestra classics.

The Scottish Ensemble has been resident in Dundee for four days, really getting under the skin of the city. Amongst a whole raft of activities, including pop-up concerts, performing a film score live at a screening at Dundee Contemporary Arts, the Ensemble has been working with string players from Dundee Schools Orchestra and Dundee Symphony Orchestra.

Frank Bridge, his pupil Benjamin Britten, and Ralph Vaughan Williams: three composers defined by their role in steering English music into the twentieth century. With Britten’s centenary approaching in 2013, Kings Place’s two-concert series of English string music was a timely reminder of the musical imagination that flourished in this country at the turn of the twentieth century.

The poetry of Arthur Rimbaud was, to borrow a phrase from the 1960s, "way out there." His 1870s collection Les Illuminations inspired Benjamin Britten, who set a selection of the poems to music: the words are surreal, bizarre, sometimes erotic, always onomatopoeic and packed with interesting sounds.

Sous la direction de Christian Zacharias, la formation auvergnate est à son aise dans un programme éclectique, notamment dans Les Illuminations de Britten où s'illustre la voix de Ruby Hugues.

Vladimir Jurowski und das Bayerische Staatsorchester machten aus Werken von Britten und Ravel ein Plädoyer für den Frieden.

Edward Gardner und Mari Eriksmoen verzauberten mit spätromantischen Pretiosen beim „Wintermezzo”-Konzert aus Norwegen.

Altstaedt, Bostridge und das Aurora Orchestra nehmen den Brexit zum Anlass für ein nachdenkliches, starkes Konzert-Statement.

Soirée-anniversaire des quarante ans de l’Orchestre de chambre de Paris, ce mercredi au Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Une programmation curieuse... jusqu'à la joyeuse surprise conclusive.