Ryuichi Sakamoto

A chart-topping superstar in his native Japan, the boyish 57-year-old is promoting his two new albums with a solo tour

Is race opera’s final frontier?

For the first time in the UK, a black tenor is performing as Otello. So is opera now colour-blind, asks Neil Fisher

Leif Ove Andsnes: Pictures at an Exhibition

The climax of a conscious attempt to expand artistic horizons, Andsnes's performance is one of coruscating force

Cecilia Bartoli

A final encore had Bartoli prancing in with scarlet ostrich feathers in her hair, prompting ecstatic ovations

OAE/Ex Cathedra/ Jeffrey Skidmore

The evening’s biggest disappointment lay in Skidmore’s shaping of the score. We needed a firmer pair of hands

Schnittke Day

The quality was variable in a run-through of 12 of the labyrinthine works of Alfred Schnittke

Royal London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sanderling

The RLPO’s championing of the work of Mieczyslaw Weinberg made one want to explore farther the Soviet composers considerable legacy

Far Theatricals

Two of the biggest hits commissioned by the John Armitage Memorial were featured in this inspiring concert

Kings Place and Southbank Centre festivals

Aldeburgh Music, Takacs Quartet and London Philharmonic Orchestra’s Between Two Worlds among musical attractions

Lucy Crowe makes her ROH debut

The singer prepares to lead as Sophie in Richard Strauss’s popular neo-rococo romantic comedy, Der Rosenkavalier

Lief Ove Andsnes combines music and visual art

Mussorgsky’s mighty piano work is to be played against a backdrop of modern video art. But will the gamble pay off?

Academy of St Martin in the Fields/Perahia

Two concerts in one — with five-star piano playing as a centrepiece, framed by three-star orchestral performance

Red Hedgehog: a perfect little gem

Intimate music-making venues such as the North London concert hall are worth fighting for, the actor argues

Aldeburgh Highlights

For the thrilling Monteverdi finale the bright paint still seemed wet as the singers coloured every word exquisitely

Philharmonia/Petrenko

Mussorgsky’s bare mountain throbbed and glowered with baleful sonorities; Shostakovich received a magnificently menacing performance

London Symphony Orchestra/Harding

Despite some fine moments, in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony the bigger picture seemed to elude Harding

Alison Balsom has put the glamour into the trumpet

With a classical Brit, wowing the Proms and mounting her own production with Edward Gardner. It can't get any better

The oddest couple

A composer and soul singer may be an unlikely match, but it is one made in heaven

Nicola Benedetti's trials of early fame

Former BBC Young Musician of the Year has finally taken command of her life as a young and successful musician

Singing in the wake of war

A middle-class choir from leafy West London was the first to visit Sierra Leone since the country’s bloody civil war

Ryuichi Sakamoto

A chart-topping superstar in his native Japan, the boyish 57-year-old is promoting his two new albums with a solo tour

Is race opera’s final frontier?

For the first time in the UK, a black tenor is performing as Otello. So is opera now colour-blind, asks Neil Fisher

Leif Ove Andsnes: Pictures at an Exhibition

The climax of a conscious attempt to expand artistic horizons, Andsnes's performance is one of coruscating force

Cecilia Bartoli

A final encore had Bartoli prancing in with scarlet ostrich feathers in her hair, prompting ecstatic ovations

OAE/Ex Cathedra/ Jeffrey Skidmore

The evening’s biggest disappointment lay in Skidmore’s shaping of the score. We needed a firmer pair of hands