Tokyo String Quartet breaks boundaries with Bartók's String Quartets 4 and 5

The Tokyo String Quartet played a kind of “meta-goodbye” concert this Saturday evening at 92Y. The performance, their last at this venue before the quartet is disbanded, featured three great composers’ own farewells, the final works written for string chamber ensembles by Schubert, Haydn, and Bartók.

More than 40 years ago, violist Kazuhide Isomura got together with three other Japanese students at the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan and formed the Tokyo String Quartet. After touring the globe for upward of 4,000 performances, more than 40 for Music Toronto, with 40 albums and nearly 40 years of teaching at Yale, last night, Mr Isomura played his final Music Toronto concert.

Serious music ill-matched by filmic limitations as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra tackles Messiaen’s epic “symphony” as part of the Southbank’s cross-genre festival. 

The road to immersion is paved with modish deflections as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs 20th-century English string music. 

Giving their 27th performance of the oratorio, the London Symphony Chorus excel as angelic angels and demonic demons. 

As gifts to the Philarmonia's 80th birthday season, Nicola Benedetti gives a barnstorming account of Elgar's Violin Concerto before Cristian Mӑcelaru gets emotionally drained by La Mer.