Orpheus and Eurydice review – acrobatic Gluck is haunting, dizzying and gasp-inducing
Iestyn Davies is outstanding as the tortured Orpheus in Yaron Lifschitz’s stark and imaginative staging
La Clemenza di Tito review – Emelyanychev and SCO spark magic with enthralling Mozart
With a luxury cast bringing anguish, believability and vocal perfection to Mozart’s opera of love and divided loyalty, this concert performance was flawless
LPO/Gardner/Akhmetshina review – Tippett’s rose lake sounds glorious
Star mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina shone in Ravel’s Shéhérazade, part of a vivid London Philharmonic programme of music evoking fairytales and far horizons
Helen Grime: Chamber Music review – clarity and colour from one of Britain’s most exciting young composers
Informed by Ted Hughes, TS Eliot and the natural world, Grime’s smaller-scale chamber pieces are alive with instrumental texture
Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos 1 & 3; Two Scherzos album review – deft execution of the Russian’s early exuberance
Capturing the momentum of two of Shostakovich’s first Soviet-era symphonies, this performance adds a pair of scherzos that pre-date even them
Budapest Festival Orchestra / Fischer review – palpable joy in a vivid Prom pairing of Beethoven and Bluebeard
Conductor Iván Fischer and his players teased out the tiny details in a stirring Seventh Symphony, while Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle was full of grisly Hungarian intensity
BBCNOW/Venditti review – 20th-century British classics shine at a potent patriotic Prom
Including a sugary Rutter premiere, the rarities were a slightly mixed bag, but the classics – The Lark Ascending, Enigma Variations and more – simply soared
BBCSO/Lintu review – there’s a good reason these Boulez and Mahler works aren’t often performed
Despite eye-catching percussion and deluxe orchestral playing, these strange, overlong pieces are for die-hards only
Káťa Kabanová review – furtive groping and a wing-bloodied angel stalk flawed staging of Janáček’s opera
Robin Ticciati conducts the London Philharmonic in this finely sung but inconsistent revival of Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production
Hallé/Wong review – new conductor commands an utterly gripping performance
Conducting without a score, Kahchun Wong beguiled as he maintained ultraprecise coordination and built to a powerful, cosmic-scale finale
The Veil of the Temple – powerful expressive talents on display in eight-hour choral epic
The opening concert of this year’s Edinburgh international festival saw conductor Sofi Jeannin put in a remarkable shift marshalling combined choirs
Lim/CBSO/Yamada review – wonderful Rachmaninov and a swirling Sinfonia
Young Korean Yunchan Lim naturally conjured a willing audience into silence with his commanding range after an alarm disrupted the popular pianist’s Prom
BBCPhil/Weilerstein/Fröst; Arvo Pärt at 90 review – star clarinettist captivates and delights
The evening’s two proms brought wildly contrasting energies. The BBC Phil were on blistering form and, late-night, the Estonian Philharmonic Choir were immaculate even if the programme felt a little bland
Chromatic Renaissance album review – Exaudi negotiate these writhing lines with exemplary precision
Exaudi, directed by James Weeks, explore late 16th-century choral works in this fascinating and involving disc
The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals album review – a joyful reminder of the richness of Claudio Arrau
Three recitals given by the Chilean pianist in the 70s and 80s are a feast of lucid and emphatic playing that hasn’t dated in the slightest