Metamorphoses of a 20 year-old string quartet: the Goldner Quartet in Sydney

At one point in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the narrator is listening to a sonata for piano and violin by the fictional Vinteuil, when “at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he tried to grasp the phrase or harmony – he did not know which – that had just been played and that had opened and expa

The noted Beethoven pianist Artur Schnabel was famously interested only in music that he felt was “better than it can be performed”. This idea of works which transcend any individual performance seems particularly true when it comes to Beethoven’s late string quartets, enigmatic masterpieces which continue to pose challenges to interpreters nearly two centuries after they were written.

Guest conductor Riccardo Minasi leads the West Australian Symphony Orchestra with a program of old favourites, with outstanding contribution from trumpeter Jenna Smith

Guest conductor Harry Bicket brings a sense of urgency to Mozart's Requiem and pulse-quickening energy to Symphony no. 40.

In his first New York appearance since the termination of his contract as BSO Music Director, Nelsons courts public sympathy and makes some thrilling music.

Jakub Hrůša leads the CSO in pedestrian Janáček and Rachmaninov, but Strauss's Four Last Songs and Wagner's Tristan excerpts send audiences home deeply touched.