Performer: Daniel Barenboim

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra are on fire with the joy of music-making to the delight of a very sympathetic and enthusiastic audience at London's Southbank Centre. 

Some conductors get better with age, ripening like fine wines, but age wearies others. Daniel Barenboim’s decline is difficult to bear.

This May, the world’s leading orchestras and soloists gather in Amsterdam for a grand celebration of all things Mahler – a city the composer described as his “second musical homeland”.

Tributes have flowed in after the conductor and pianist announced his diagnosis on Thursday: “I am planning to maintain as many of my professional commitments as my health permits.”

Presenting all nine symphonies and the song cycles over ten days in Amsterdam, the Mahler Festival features the Royal Concertgebouw, Budapest Festival, NHK Symphony, Chicago Symphony and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras.