Performer: Maxim Rysanov

Youthful Mahler, earth-shattering Shostatovich and life-affirming Schumann, played by The Maisky Trio and Maxim Rysanov at the Istanbul Music Festival.

Vasks’ Viola Concerto receives its Scottish première with Maxim Rysanov and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra as they explore music and nature in the Baltic, Rome and America.

The Turku Philharmonic showcases some of the finest work from 20th-century Slavic composers.  

Playing repeatedly in my mind as I walked home on 24 July was the spine-chilling orchestral performance of the "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in the Franz Liszt Academy’s superb Solti Hall.

A few nights after the Berliner Philharmoniker brought us Janáček’s late masterpiece, the Glagolitic Mass, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Tugan Sokhiev took the stage with his other great work from the same year, 1926: the Sinfonietta, Op. 60, which originally appeared with the modifier “Military”.