Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Symphony no. 8 in C minor, WAB 108

The Staatskapelle Berlin’s Festtage concert in the Philharmonie proves a feast for brass lovers. 

Semyon Bychkov guides the BBC Symphony Orchestra, on magisterial form, through the hills and valleys of Bruckner's last completed and longest symphony.

Bruckner's Eighth Symphony should never leave you cold. It is almost impossible for any interpreter to satisfy all expectations in such a multi-faceted work, but Paavo Järvi came pretty close.

The season’s opening concert at Zurich’s historic Tonhalle features the world premiere of a commissioned work by Toshio Hosokawa, this season’s Focus Artist, and a symphony by Anton Bruckner.

Domingo Hindoyan conducts Bruckner's Eighth in an, at times, arrestingly intimate reading.

Nothing for doomsters and gloomsters here in this performance of Bruckner's majestic Eighth, turning intimations of mortality into a celebration of life itself.

A great orchestra visits Tokyo, but mediocre conducting disappoints. 

There's undeniable power in the Berliner Philharmoniker's playing, but Zubin Mehta needed to offer a stronger sense of where his Bruckner was heading and why.

Andris Nelson’s repeated fast upward flicks of the baton were disquieting to watch.

Jaap van Zweden led his new orchestra in a provocative premiere by the multi-talented Conrad Tao followed by a surprisingly bland Bruckner 8.

Markus Poschner and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz conclude their UK tour with an impulsive, passionate performance at Symphony Hall.

Peter Oundjian’s final Bruckner with the RSNO reveals real strengths.

Shining brass highlighted an honest Bruckner Eight which was preceded by Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major played by Robert Levin.

Yannick leads Philadelphia Orchestra on spiritual journey throug Bruckner's Eighth Symphony. 

The London Philharmonic Orchestra and Lawrence Renes demonstrate why one symphony, Bruckner's majestic Eighth, can successfully fill an entire concert evening.

The jury's still out on the British maestro's Brucknerian credentials as he tackles his grandest and greatest symphony

Many think that Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony points to a kind of cosmic grandeur, and little else can match the power and excellence of its finest performance. The Lucerne concert proved them right.

Rattle and the LSO give a superb account of the extreme moments in Bruckner's eighth, without convincing over the whole work.

With exceptional nuance, lead flautist Juliette Hurel demonstrated her Olympian skills in Bruno Mantovani's technically exhausting, often violent work. With the flute in mind, Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s wildly upbeat Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in C-minor ‘Titan’ made for new discoveries in Bruckner.

Zimmermann and Bruckner given a lustrous outing by Andris Nelsons and the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall. 

The idea of bringing together a country’s best players from all around the world to show off their combined might is all too familiar for football fans during any FIFA World Cup. It is far less common, indeed, almost unknown in classical music.

Segerstam elicits oustanding playing from the BBCSO in an immense Bruckner 8, preceded by the BBC Singers exquisite Bruckner motets.

Haitink's Bruckner is begining to show signs of his age, but occasional problems of stamina and focus were of little consequence to this otherwise powerful and authoritative reading.

Alan Gilbert leads the New York Philharmonic with guest pianist Yefim Bronfman in a concert of contrasts: Bartók's Piano Concerto no. 3 and Bruckner's Symphony no. 8 in C minor.

The Youth Orchestra of Upper Austria under Rémy Ballot play Bruckner's 8th with extended intensity at the monastery of St Florian. 

Fabio Luisi and the LSO, vindicate magnificently Bruckner's first thoughts for his Eighth Symphony, and with Lise de la Salle create a splendidly multi-dimensional Mozart.

Renaud Capuçon and the LPO fail to make the most of Schumann's Violin Concerto, but Saraste's fast, rhapsodic Bruckner made up in beauty of orchestral sound for an unconvincing overall interpretation.

Van Zweden steps in for an indisposed Nézet-Séguin, his debut with the Vienna Philharmonic in a powerful but mainly extrovert performance of Bruckner's 8th Symphony.

Brahms and Bruckner: Two diametrically opposed pieces of large-scale music from 1887, hailing from two opposing ends of the Romantic spectrum, make up this Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra programme. 

The Vienna Philharmonic under Lorin Maazel brought a superb performance of Bruckner’s mighty Eighth Symphony to the penultimate night of the Proms, after a selection of Bach organ works from Klaus Sonnleitner.Clichés abound in writing about Bruckner symphonies. One which cannot be escaped, however, is the necessity for an absolutely solid grasp of long structure.

Christian Thielemann’s repertoire is broader than is often made out, but not that much broader. At its heart are the four composers most associated with late Austro-Germanic Romanticism: Johannes Brahms, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Anton Bruckner.

Amateur orchestras attract loyal audiences who turn up whatever is on the programme, and this may account for the fact that both Adrian Brown of the Bromley Symphony Orchestra last week, and Philip Hesketh tonight, felt the need to provide an introductory talk. Indeed, the first half of this concert consisted of an extended introduction to Bruckner and his Eighth Symphony.

Mozart finished the Piano Concerto no. 27 in January 1791, the year he was to die. His music had fallen out of favour in Vienna, he was very short of funds, and he and his wife had been repeatedly unwell over the previous years.

Few conductors preface Bruckner’s vast Eighth Symphony with an amuse-bouche before the interval. If they do, they tend to pick one of three options, all of which make sense in different ways. Rarely there might be a new composition. More often you hear Haydn or Mozart, especially from the older guard of Brucknerians like Bernard Haitink, Daniel Barenboim, and so on.

When you begin to get to know the symphonies of Anton Bruckner it’s not long before you come up against “the Bruckner problem”: the fact that there are multiple versions of many of the works, some of which originate from the composer himself who went through periods of revision-mania, while others are the results of collaborations with his supporters, and some were done without the composer’s invo

Sergiu Celibidache, the Munich Philharmonic’s Principal Conductor from 1979 to 1996, famously described Bruckner as “God’s greatest gift”, so it was a fitting tribute to the great maestro to perform one of the composer’s greatest works, the monumental Eighth Symphony, at his 100th birthday concert.

The opening theme of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 8 is announced in the depths of the orchestra; with the precise rhythm of the main theme of the first movement of Beethoven’s 9th and something of the character of the Siegfried motive from Götterdämmerung, it contains energy and heroic aspiration, but also a harmonic instability that gives it a searching and unsettled quality.

Of Bruckner’s mighty symphonies, the Eighth is the mightiest. Dedicated to Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria (although at one stage the repeatedly lovelorn 63 year old composer sought to dedicate it to a young girl he met at the opera, Marie Demar) Bruckner’s hints at its programme speak of such things as ‘the annunciation of death’ in the first movement and the grand meeting of the three emperor

The Hertford Bruckner Orchestra is really quite an extraordinary phenomenon. It is an ensemble of mainly amateur musicians, centred round Hertford College, Oxford but involving players from the University, the city and elsewhere in the UK – founded principally to perform the symphonies of Anton Bruckner! His symphonies are rarely played outside the professional circuit, so the HBO welcomes anyon

After the overture, whose two movements, fast and slow, were adequately dispatched by a suitably small orchestra, the audience mistook the arrival of an orchestral horn player as that of the soloist himself, and burst into applause, which turned to laughter as the mistake became obvious.

The Fulham Camerata is a wonderfully inclusive group that mixes professionals, semi-professionals and keen amateurs - recruited without audition and receiving support and training from the professionals. The quality of their singing, on the evidence of last night’s concert, is first rate, and the sheer fullness of tone and response to dynamics in Bruckner’s motet Os Justi was quite glorious.

This was a tremendous concert. That is to say it presented two of the grandest works in their genre, Mozart’s longest piano concerto and Bruckner’s longest completed symphony, moving from Mozart’s imposing C major maestoso entrance to, nearly 2 hours of music later, Bruckner’s blazing C major transfiguration.

The Salomon Orchestra launched into a blistering performance of the opening paragraph of Richard Strauss’s tone poem, Don Juan. It opened with a portrayal of a Don Juan of such indomitable vitality, that it left you reeling before it and more than happy to sink into the caresses of the seduced beauty portrayed in the first love scene, and it spoke volumes for the virtuosity of this orchestra.

Giancarlo Guerrero dirigió la Sinfónica de Galicia en el último concierto de la temporada con una magnífica Octava de Bruckner.

Au Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo, Jukka-Pekka Saraste conduit les troupes de l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo dans une déambulation guidée de la Huitième de Bruckner.

Atmosphärische Effekte und mehr verbanden zwei Werke aus Barock und Romantik, die mit Ars Antiqua Austria und Orchestre des Champs-Élysées in einem Konzert gespielt wurden. Eine gelungene Premiere.

Auch im biblischen Alter von knapp 97 Jahren setzt Herbert Blomstedt Bruckner-Maßstäbe.

Le chef nonagénaire a dirigé une interprétation extraordinaire du chef-d'œuvre monumental de Bruckner, introduisant vie, lumière et émotion dans cette cathédrale sonore.

Los músicos de la Filarmónica Ciudad de México brillaron en la intepretación del Octava de Bruckner bajo una vigorosa dirección de Scott Yoo. 

Yannik Nézet-Séguin kombiniert Bruckners Achte Symphonie mit einem Vorspann von Lili Boulanger und schafft so unerwartete Bezüge. Das Lucerne Festival Orchestra zeigt sich in Bestform.