Venue: NHK Hall, Tokyo

As part of its centenary celebrations this season, the NHK Symphony Orchestra has curated a Japanese Composer Series with three intriguing concerts, of which this concert is the second.

As a leading exponent of Franz Schmidt's music, conductor Fabio Luisi leads the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo in a rare performance of his Fourth Symphony for the orchestra's season opener.

For whatever reason Fabio Luisi chose Verdi's Requiem for his inauguration concert with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo, it turned out to be an apt and poignant choice.

Paarvo Järvi and the NHK Symphony give a riveting account of Schumann and Schubert.

Tokyo’s NHK Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pinchas Steinberg, gives a performance of perhaps the most famous of Bedrich Smetana’s works, a romantic tribute to his motherland, Má vlast.

Nikolaj Znaider and Fabio Luisi, along with NHKSO Tokyo, re-stated the obvious truth of art music that “it is all about the details.”

This was without a doubt the best performance of Mahler's First Symphony. Norrington's humor comes through and complements his superb musicianship.The First often gets bogged down, but this performance was bright and alwaysexciting giving the instrumentalists enough room to show their skills... andwhat skills.I have no doubt that the NHK Symphony is the greatest orchestraat this time.