En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Rosemary Joshua

Händels opernoratorisches Speziellentum begeistert mit Dantones stimmlichem Allstarteam

Ottavio Dantone, the Accademia Bizantina and the Norwegian Soloists' Choir gave a strong performance of Handel's oratorio Belshazzar.

Profound, fair and thought-provoking, Handel's Theodora argues for faith as a personal journey, not a political decree. The English Concert brought their rendition to the Barbican Centre in London.

Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival came to an end with John Adams' oratorio El Niño, composed in 2000. The London Philharmonic Orchestra suited the piece well, and this was a performance to cherish.

François-Xavier Roth conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in a varied programme of Mozart, Webern and Strauss, concluding with a powerful performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra at St David’s Hall in Cardiff.It was hard to spot a linking factor between the programmed works, but they seemed to complement each other nicely.

The culmination of the London Handel Festival is a much anticipated event, and tonight’s performance of Handel’s radiant composition L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was no exception. With an array of eminent musicians performing to a packed St George’s, Hanover Square, the mood was celebratory and the performance had a glow and energy that suited Handel’s mercurial music.

Handel’s Belshazzar was the oratorio of choice for renowned music group Les Arts Florissants at the Barbican last week. The group was famously set up in France in 1979 by the American-born William Christie, eventually becoming an international household name for its critically acclaimed performances and recordings of Baroque operas on period instruments.

Written in the late 1740s, Judas Maccabaeus was a clever attempt by the ever-wily Handel to capitalize on recent successes, both his own – in the form of the now-established oratorio concert – and that of the nation, in the wake of the recent victories over Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scottish rebels.

The last opera of the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle – the second of the composer’s operas to be performed in this Mozart-dominated season at the Royal Opera House – Così fan tutte pivots on two pairs of young lovers whose affection is put to the test by an old ‘philosopher’, Don Alfonso. Women, the old man argues, are all the same: never constant in their love, never loyal to their men.

Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, first performed at the Birmingham Town Hall in 1847, was enormously popular in Victorian England. In this sense, the Royal Albert Hall, the grandest of Victorian buildings, is spiritually an ideal venue for this great choral masterpiece.

There are the knowns. The things, as Rumsfeld would have it, that we know that we know. Like the way the Aurora orchestra can bring sheer youthful exuberance to a fast piece like the G Major presto finale to the symphony No.27 which ended the first half of last night's all-Mozart concert at Kings Place. Aurora don't just survive at these breakneck tempi, they absolutely thrive on them.