| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 22-May-2013 La Maison Symphonique de Montréal | Mahler's Fifth with David Zinman and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal | Andrew Crust |
 The program this evening was quite significantly lopsided – though most programs containing Mahler symphonies end up being this way. Tonight’s juxtaposition was quite profound, perhaps even more than usual. Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 18 in B flat major was poised like a pebble next to a mountain. It was a polished pebble, but minuscule in comparison nonetheless.
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| 4-May-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Birdsong in Birmingham: Mitsuko Uchida with Andris Nelsons and the CBSO | Katherine Dixson, katherinedixson.co.uk |
 It wasn’t only Mitsuko Uchida’s hands that were agile. Her arrival on stage was accompanied by the deepest bow imaginable, bending from the waist until she resembled a tuning fork. Such Japanese formality was paired with a warm, glowing smile and a real connection with players and audience alike.
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| 29-Apr-2013 Wigmore Hall | Preludes and pictures: Alexander Gavrylyuk debuts at Wigmore Hall | Frances Wilson |
 Stepping in for the indisposed Cédric Tiberghien, the Ukrainian-born Australian pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk wowed Wigmore Hall’s lunchtime audience with a debut concert replete in masterful displays of pianism, in the purest meaning of the word.
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| 27-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Emanuel Ax, Alan Gilbert and the New York Phil lay out their craft with Bruckner and Mozart | Joseph Pfender |
 Maurice Jerry Beznos.jpg) Saturday night, Avery Fisher Hall saw a solid and well-crafted final performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 25 and Bruckner’s Symphony no. 3. The piano concerto was cleanly executed and so polished as to allow the Mozartean patina to shine clearly through. Emanuel Ax played with a crisp yet sonorous articulation which seems to be typical of good interpretations of the concerto, and overall played exceedingly well.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Apr-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Scottish Chamber Orchestra and George Benjamin celebrate Britten | Alan Coady |
 This second of two SCO Britten centenary concerts saw its subject juxtaposed with two living British composers and Mozart. Cynics might consider the closing Symphony no. 40 in G minor (1788) a reward for surviving the rest of the programme’s modernity. However, the audience of sophisticated, paying volunteers, such as I felt to be present, would be more likely to detect in it a parallel with our own, home-grown, prolific child prodigy, Benjamin Britten.Read full review... | ||
| 21-Apr-2013 Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR): Henri le Boeuf Concert Hall | Brussels does Vienna: The National Orchestra of Belgium take on Mozart and the mighty Bruckner 4 | Alice Hughes |
 Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts occupies the site where once stood the Pensionnat Héger, the school where Charlotte and Emily Brontë lived during their sojourn in the Belgian capital – an appropriate setting, as it is not difficult to imagine Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony underscoring one of the sisters’ Gothic tales of unrequited love.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2013 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd | Modernist Mozart at the end of time: Tetzlaff at 92Y | David Allen, unpredictableinevitability.com |
 It’s easiest to describe Christian Tetzlaff’s approach to playing the violin by what he isn’t trying to do. He is not trying to play as beautifully as possible, in the conventional sense. He is not trying to sound like a nightingale, soaring long, honeyed lines above an accompaniment. He is not, in other words, trying to make his violin sound as the mind’s ear instinctively thinks it should. That is too easy, after all, and it inhibits a truer sense of expression.Read full review... | ||
| 20-Apr-2013 Royal Northern College of Music | Manchester Camerata at the RNCM | Rohan Shotton |
.jpg) Manchester Camerata’s series of Mozart concertos, an ongoing theme in their 40th anniversary season, came to a close with pianist Ferenc Rados joining fellow Hungarian Gábor Takács-Nagy for a superb account of the Piano Concerto no. 15 at the Royal Northern College of Music.
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| 16-Apr-2013 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Die Zauberflöte at Covent Garden | David Karlin |
 How, I wonder, is it best for an opera company to treat a revival of a well-aired, well-liked, decent but not particularly radical production of a top ten opera? This was what the Royal Opera had to contend with in this season’s revival of David McVicar’s 2003 setting of Die Zauberflöte: many in the audience will have known every note of the opera, and several will have been thoroughly familiar with the production.
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| 11-Apr-2013 Lincoln Center: Avery Fisher Hall | Messiaen, Mozart and Murail offer a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds at the New York Philharmonic | Rebecca Lentjes |
 “Synesthesia” is a neurological condition that causes an involuntary sensory experience to be provoked from an initial stimulation of a different sensory or cognitive pathway – for instance, automatically associating colors with numbers, letters, or sounds. Olivier Messiaen, a 20th-century French composer, organist, and ornithologist, “heard” colors in all music, whether tonal, modal, or serial. His own compositions are undeniably colorful themselves, dating back to his early composition Les offrandes oubliées (“The Forgotten Offerings”).Read full review... | ||
| 6-Apr-2013 Elgin Theatre | The Magic Flute as great musical comedy from Opera Atelier in Toronto | James Karas |
 Opera Atelier espouses truth in advertising: The Magic Flute, they tell us, is a Singspiel in two acts. You can call it a play with songs, a musical comedy, even an operetta, but hardly an opera in the traditional sense. Call it what you will, this is Opera Atelier’s fourth production of the work in the last 22 years.
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| 6-Apr-2013 Sydney Conservatorium of Music: Verbrugghen Hall | Enigmas and emotions: Outstanding chamber musicians at the Musica Viva Festival in Sydney | David Larkin |
 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. But what makes the String Quartet in B flat Op. 130 so great?Read full review... | ||
| 2-Apr-2013 İş Sanat | Martin Fröst plays Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra in Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 Even if the joke is good, it’s all in the telling, as they say. Mozart’s Ein musikalischer Spaß (“A Musical Joke”) is good, but it probably meant more to its contemporaries than it does to us today. It is Mozart’s satire of the incompetent composers, musicians and copyists of his time. It’s an inside joke, for all practical purposes. We still like listening to it; it’s whimsical, it puts a smile on our faces – but probably not every time.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Mar-2013 City Hall Concert Hall | The Hong Kong Sinfonietta in Mozart and Beethoven evergreens | Alan Yu, alanayu.wordpress.com |
 Over the years, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta has made laudable efforts in bringing classical music to the masses and recruiting new audiences. Of necessity, it sticks to a well-trodden repertoire of evergreens which challenges musicians to bring a fresh perspective.
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| 24-Mar-2013 Institut Français (French Institute): Library | Traversing the globe: Ferenc Vizi at the Institut Français | Julia Savage |
 In a quiet backstreet just a couple of minutes’ walk from South Kensington underground station stands the Institut Français du Royaume-Uni. It is one branch of a global network that exists to promote cross-cultural dialogue and to showcase the best of French culture, be that through food, media, or music. The Art Deco building boasts a ciné lumière and a wood-panelled library, and it was the latter that formed the venue for an intimate piano recital given by the pianist Ferenc Vizi as part of the Institut’s recent festival It’s all about Piano!
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| 18-Mar-2013 İş Sanat | All Mozart and no play: Kevin Griffiths, Paul Lewis and Berlin Kammerorchester in Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 The billing looked intriguing enough: Kevin Griffiths – the young London-born conductor, celebrated for his dedication to contemporary music, coupled with his fellow countryman Paul Lewis – one of today’s prominent performers of Beethoven and particularly Schubert, in an evening dedicated to Mozart’s music. Still, the odd one out in the sonic equation seemed to be the Kammerorchester Berlin, who, although obviously proficient enough to play anything put in front of them, sounded a little too thin.
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| 14-Mar-2013 Middlesbrough Theatre | Comedy and seriousness: Young Opera Venture's The Marriage of Figaro in Middlesborough | Jane Shuttleworth |
 Young Opera Venture states that its aims are to provide professional performing opportunities for young graduate singers, and to bring affordable opera performances to small venues in towns where opera isn’t normally available. Their production of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Jane Anthony, had clearly been very carefully thought out in order to meet the needs of audiences and venues that are unaccustomed to opera, and they achieved this impressively, whilst avoiding any “dumbing down”.
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| 6-Mar-2013 İş Sanat | An exemplary partnership: Emmanuel Pahud and Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra in Istanbul | Alain Matalon |
 Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra is no stranger when it comes to working with world-renowned soloists – their earlier collaborative roster includes the likes of Sviatoslav Richter, Menuhin, Rostropovich et al, but their rapport with Emmanuel Pahud is something that transcends musical partnership and wanders into the organically-knit companionship territory. The program chosen for this evening kept one foot firmly rooted in staples of Baroque, while stretching its legs wide enough to reach lesser-known works from later eras.
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| 2-Mar-2013 Hackney Empire | A frivolous Così fan tutte: English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire | Emily Owen |
 Mozart’s Così fan tutte is a comic opera filled with deceit, disguises and betrayal, all carried along by a breathtaking score and witty lyrics. What better way to start ETO’s Spring 2013 season than with a new rendering of this timeless work, in a brilliantly clever English translation by Martin Fitzpatrick. The curtain rose to reveal a simple, minimalistic set, designed by Samal Blak, who is the combined set and costume designer for all three of ETO’s operas this season.Read full review... | ||
| 28-Feb-2013 Bridgewater Hall | Dreams of Mozart and Mendelssohn with the Hallé | Andrew H. King |
 Mozart and Mendelssohn are surely two of the most popular composers for both the seasoned elitist and the irregular classical listener; tonight’s offering of time-tested favourites wrapped in the summer breeze of familiarity, coupled with the rare and exciting prospect of hearing Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was likely to be a draw – and it was.
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| 28-Feb-2013 Birmingham Symphony Hall | Andrés Orozco-Estrada impresses in Mozart, disappoints in Mahler with the CBSO | Peter Marks |
 Andrés Orozco-Estrada has been feted as “a brilliant stand-in”, having replaced a number of more well-known conductors at short notice in Vienna, where he studied his craft. He is now the music director of the Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna having made an all-important career breakthrough.
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| 28-Feb-2013 Guildhall School Theatre | High drama and hilarity: Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama | Julia Savage |
 Despite a relatively easy-to-follow storyline, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro is an opera that is hard to pull off entirely successfully. Musically, it requires enormous vigour from both cast and orchestra; dramatically, this opera buffa demands strong acting skills in order to eke out its moments of farce. The Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s production made very good efforts on both counts, though it was not without flaw.
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| 23-Feb-2013 Sheldonian Theatre | Bruckner and Mozart from the Oxford Philomusica | Katy Wright |
 The level of anticipation for Saturday’s Oxford Philomusica concert was high, although not necessarily for the reasons you might expect: several minutes passed after tuning before the concertmaster emerged from the wings of Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre. Although the Sheldonian may be somewhat lacking acoustically, the building’s grandeur more than makes up for it. The main feature of the interior is undoubtedly Robert Streater’s painted ceiling (depicting “Truth descending upon the Arts and Sciences to expel Ignorance from the University”).Read full review... | ||
| 21-Feb-2013 Severance Hall | Thrilling performances of Mozart and Dvořák from Blomstedt and Cleveland Orchestra | Timothy Robson |
 This week’s Cleveland Orchestra concert program looks like the syllabus from a music appreciation course: Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G minor, and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony no. 9 in E minor, “From the New World”.Read full review... | ||
| 21-Feb-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Piotr Anderszewski and Alexander Janiczek with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra | Alan Coady |
 This creative SCO programme offered two works in either half, performed in reverse chronological order. Virtuoso violinist Alexander Janiczek directed the first of each pair, beginning with Schubert’s 1817 Overture in D major “In the Italian Style”, D.590. Conrad Wilson, whose supplied fine programme notes for the entire concert, described the work as Schubert’s response to a “Rossini frenzy that swept Vienna in 1816”. Taking this as a test case, the Italianising of Teutonic works seems to amount to a lightening of touch.Read full review... | ||
| 16-Feb-2013 Dr Anton Philipszaal | Passion and eloquence from the Amsterdam Sinfonietta and Ronald Brautigam | Joanna Marsden |
.jpg) On Saturday evening, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta with soloist Ronald Brautigam presented a splendidly varied programme including pieces by Webern, Mozart and Bach.
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| 15-Feb-2013 Bridgewater Hall | Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert from the BBC Philharmonic | Rohan Shotton |
 Chief conductor Juanjo Mena conducted a programme of energetic Beethoven and Schubert alongside an original reading of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.
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| 14-Feb-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Dutoit leads LA Phil in Valentine’s Day concert | Ted Ayala |
 The program was dubbed “Romance at the Phil”, but the music presented was hardly the sort to set lovers’ hearts aflame. It could even said to be a touch staid. There was Mendelssohn and Mozart in the first half. Richard Strauss is closer to the mark – this is the composer of Salome, after all – but it was his jovial Don Quixote that closed out the night.
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| 13-Feb-2013 Théâtre Rialto | Classical music revisited with Collectif 9 | Andrew Crust |
 The string nonet Collectif 9 offers its public something truly as valuable as it is rare: classical repertoire “revisited with passion and fearlessness”. They are a group of very young and fiercely talented string players, many of whom play in the city’s professional orchestras. They enthusiastically align themselves with the growing movement called Classical Revolution which seeks to bring “art music” to a variety of venues and audiences with the goal of obliterating the stigmas of musty conventionalism and tradition far too often associated with the genre.
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| 10-Feb-2013 Sydney Opera House: Concert Hall | Mozart to Brett Dean: Australian Chamber Orchestra on form in eclectic, partly-electric concert | David Larkin |
 Spot the odd one out: a symphony by Haydn, another by Mozart, a violin concerto by Mozart, and Electric Preludes by Brett Dean (2012). The bill of fare offered by the Australian Chamber Orchestra on Sunday cannot be called typical for them, since their programs evade any easy categorisation, but the gesture of mixing old and new is certainly a familiar gambit.Read full review... | ||
| 7-Feb-2013 Église de Saanen, Saanen | Exemplary Prokofiev and extraordinary Beethoven from Elisabeth Leonskaja | David Karlin |
 There are some concerts where everything comes together, where the music is perfectly suited to the performers, and the hall is perfectly suited to their playing style. Last night’s concert at Saanen Church, in which Elisabeth Leonskaja joined Wojciech Rajski and his Polish Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4, was just such an occasion.
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| 7-Feb-2013 Riverside Studios | The Magic Flute gets metatheatrical with the Merry Opera Company | Paul Kilbey |
 Mozart’s original The Magic Flute is bizarre enough. The story of a prince and a bird-catcher’s journey to save a princess they’ve never met from a sinister quasi-Freemason who turns out to be alright, it is sufficiently packed full of great songs and good humour to have become an enduring repertory favourite – but that doesn’t mean it makes any sense. It doesn’t, really. It is a daft opera.
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| 4-Feb-2013 Queen's Hall, Edinburgh | Heath Quartet make the sparks fly with Alban Berg in Edinburgh | Jeremy Morris |
 Some of the best chamber concerts in Edinburgh are put on by the New Town Concerts Society. They feature performances by famous groups and also afford younger, less well-known ensembles an opportunity to reach a wider audience. The Heath Quartet falls somewhere between these categories, as they have been steadily gaining in recognition over the last five years or so.
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| 3-Feb-2013 The Royal Conservatory of Music, TELUS Centre, Koerner Hall | Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier in Toronto | Patrick P.L. Lam |
 When French-Canadian pianists Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier entered the stage of the Koerner Hall on Sunday, the 800-plus audience participated with an unprecedented level of attention. An episode also occurred to enforce this attention. When an anonymous concert-goer repeatedly started coughing during the recital, Lortie, feeling irritated, signalled a halt during the performance before commencing again. From then on, an aura surrounded these two pianists and the music they produced.Read full review... | ||
| 31-Jan-2013 Leeds Grand Theatre | A new production of Clemenza di Tito from John Fulljames and Opera North | Sam Wigglesworth |
 This new production of Mozart’s final, and often overlooked, opera from John Fulljames and Opera North is neither a period piece nor a straightforward translation into our own time. Instead, it inhabits it own dark and austere world created by set designer Conor Murphy and Finn Ross, whose stylish abstract projections incorporate elements of government buildings both ancient and modern. The Emperor and his advisors, dressed all in black, are presented as gloomy goths, the only colour being provided by the love of Tito’s life, Berenice.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Jan-2013 Southbank Centre: Royal Festival Hall | Simon Rattle and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment excel in Mozart | Chris Garlick |
 Fifteen years ago I sat dutifully listening to the excellent Haringey Schools Orchestra nobly attempting to bring off the herculean musical feat of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. Many hours of coaching and rehearsal had clearly brought the youngsters to this point. Proud parents and friends fidgeted through the painful 55 minutes, and everyone clapped appreciatively when it ended. It was then that the delightful announcement was made that local boy Sir Simon Rattle had agreed to conduct Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band overture to round off the concert.Read full review... | ||
| 27-Jan-2013 Schumannhaus | Young artists of exceptional talent play Mozart, Schumann and Schubert at Schumannhaus Bonn | Jane Mcintosh |
| Two young musicians studying and performing in Germany presented an interesting programme of piano and violin music at the Schumannhaus in Bonn on Sunday afternoon choosing three pieces which combined piano and violin in interesting variations. All three gave the lead to the piano – with violin as accompaniment. So the usual assumption that the violin should play the major role was given an engaging challenge.
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| 26-Jan-2013 Christus Triumfatorkerk | Les Vents Atlantiques shines in a riveting performance of baroque symphonic works | Kristen Huebner |
 The youthful, up-and-coming orchestral ensemble, Les Vents Atlantiques, presented a riveting program this weekend to an eager audience. Performing chamber and orchestral repertoire from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, the group was led by violinist Rebecca Huber. Members of this new ensemble formed in The Hague during the past couple years, promoting the performance practice of this repertoire in the manner in which it was done at the time of its composition.Read full review... | ||
| 26-Jan-2013 Meyerson Symphony Center | Sturm und Drang: Minor-Key Mozart at the Meyerson | Evan Mitchell |
 Capping off their two-weekend Mozart Festival, the Dallas Symphony played three minor-key masterworks this weekend, plus one major-key selection. Music in minor keys is the exception to the Mozartian rule – only two each of the 27 piano concerti and 41 symphonies are in minor. Perhaps Mozart saved minor keys for truly extraordinary musical statements, or else perceived his audiences (or patrons) to prefer his sunnier works. In any case, those minor-key works Mozart did write tend to be special for reasons surpassing their mere scarcity.
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| 24-Jan-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | LA Phil and Morlot offer mixed bag of Dutilleux, Mozart, and Beethoven | Ted Ayala |
 A tense, Holocaust-inspired orchestral work by Henri Dutilleux followed by one of Mozart’s most chipper piano concertos on one half; a second half consisting of only the Beethoven Symphony no. 5. That's a strange enough combination on paper – and hearing it actually realized is stranger still. You have to wonder what they were thinking. And by “they” I mean whoever devised the oddball program that guest conductor Ludovic Morlot conducted last night with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
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| 22-Jan-2013 Wigmore Hall | Classical Opera explore Mozart's music for castrati | Nahoko Gotoh |
 Classical Opera’s well-attended concert at the Wigmore Hall was intriguingly titled “Mozart’s Castrati”. It is well known that Handel wrote many of his famous opera roles for castrati such as Senesino, but perhaps not that much is known about the castrato roles in Mozart’s operas or the castrato singers he composed for – probably because he did not cast castrati in any of his popular da Ponte operas or in Zauberflöte.
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| 19-Jan-2013 Meyerson Symphony Center | Turkish, sunny Wolfgang: Round One of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra's Mozart Festival | Evan Mitchell |
 Outside.jpg) Verdi and Wagner may be turning 200 in 2013, but certainly that doesn’t make their music any more or less worth celebrating than it was last year, or will be in five years’ time. So why not mix things up and mark a prime number here and there? In honor of a certain upcoming 257th birthday, Jaap van Zweden led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra this weekend in the first of two programs comprising the DSO’s Mozart Festival.Read full review... | ||
| 19-Jan-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Susan Graham and Renée Fleming stunning at Disney Hall | Matthew Richard Martinez |
 One would think that either Renée Fleming or Susan Graham alone would be reason enough to sell out a large venue such as Disney Hall. But everything is bigger in Hollywood, and the LA Phil brought both artists together for a one-night recital of French art song. But even that wasn’t enough. This was not an ordinary recital with neatly arranged sets of the typical repertoire finished off with a few predictable encores, concluded in two hours’ time. No, this was a thoughtful survey of French mélodies and their English-speaking muses, with slideshows, anecdotes, and stories.
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| 13-Dec-2012 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Mehta and the LA Phil celebrate their 50th anniversary together | Ted Ayala |
 It was an auspicious debut; a collaboration that, in time, would propel both orchestra and conductor to the very summit of the classical music world. On the stage of the old Philharmonic Hall in Downtown stepped a 24-year-old conductor at the very beginning of his world career. The orchestra before him had begun to make headway into global prominence during the short-lived tenure of its previous music director, Eduard van Beinum.Read full review... | ||
| 12-Dec-2012 Konzerthaus: Großer Saal | Meister, Mozart and Martinů with the RSO Wien | Zwölftöner |
| Cornelius Meister has long been a champion of young Czech composer Miroslav Srnka, not only as chief conductor of the RSO Wien but also in Heidelberg, where he was Generalmusikdirektor from 2005 until earlier this year. Reading Lessons is a work commissioned by Heidelberg that now comes to Vienna as part of a broader Srnka focus in the current RSO season (just last month Nicolas Hodges premiered a piano concerto with the orchestra), though presentation as part of the staid overture-concerto-symphony format has done his voice fewer favours this time around. Read full review... | ||
| 9-Dec-2012 Eastbourne Congress Theatre | Alexandra Silocea dazzles with the LPO and Jurowski at Congress Theatre, Eastbourne | Evan Dickerson |
 It is often interesting to hear performers one knows well in a different setting, and this concert was a case in point for me. The London Philharmonic Orchestra have performed often in Eastbourne since the 1930s and at the Congress Theatre for the past seventeen seasons, but this was my first visit to the venue. Based on this concert, I am hopeful that it will not be my last. The reading of Brahms’ Tragic Overture allowed ample opportunity to assess the acoustic, finding that it favoured a bright violin timbre, whilst allowing the lower strings to be resonant.Read full review... | ||
| 5-Dec-2012 Konzerthaus: Großer Saal | Grigory Sokolov in recital at the Wiener Konzerthaus | Zwölftöner |
 Grigory Sokolov’s annual visit to the Konzerthaus – always in December, always half-lit, always a lengthy affair – is an object of cultish appreciation for the Viennese, who are drawn to mystique like moths to a flame. Public reverence on this occasion did not however extend to the silencing of mobile phones and such a persistent chorus of ringtones I do not recall since hearing Arcadi Volodos, supposedly another local favourite.
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| 2-Dec-2012 St George's Bristol | A brand new orchestra: The Enigma Orchestra at St George's Bristol | Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres |
| A brand new orchestra took to the stage on Sunday night to introduce themselves. The Enigma Orchestra, co-founded this year by Robert Weaver and Arian Aghababaie, is made up of high-standard amateur instrumentalists from in and around Bristol. The orchestral team had coordinated all the visual aspects of the concert with a theme of white, red and black. Everything matched, from the programmes to the red uplights and the red and black flower brooches adorning the female performers.
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| 1-Dec-2012 Concertgebouw: Main Hall | Masaaki Suzuki leads Radio Kamer Philharmonic through Sturm und Drang | Kristen Huebner |
.jpg) The Radio Kamer Filharmonie gave a riveting performance of orchestral works of the late 18th century under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki this weekend at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. The theme of the afternoon dealt with the brief but highly influential German artistic movement dubbed Sturm und Drang. Originating in around the 1770s, this aesthetic outburst formed first in the fields of literature and philosophy while having cross-disciplinary reaches to the areas of music, painting and theater.
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| 29-Nov-2012 Semperoper | A fresh take on Mozart's Idomeneo in Dresden | Matthew Lynch |
 Mozart wrote 20 operas during his relatively short life, the first being performed in Salzburg in 1767, when the composer was just eleven years old. However, it is Idomeneo, written and premièred when Mozart was the ripe old age of 25, which is usually considered to be his first mature opera.
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