A fine new set of 11 CDs recorded with the Czech Philharmonic may divide Mahler devotees – but there is much to be discovered in them

Everything about the ROH’s staging of Henry James’s ghost story is unnerving

Classical music’s best and brightest gathered to hear the first concert premiere ever held beneath Michelangelo’s frescoes

A capacity Albert Hall crowd made their way through tube strike London to see the composer's unfinished Symphony No 9

Cue poisoned mushrooms and fierce satire as the BBC Phil and ENO join forces in Shostakovich’s denounced opera

Simon Rattle conducts the Swiss festival’s dazzling orchestra in his debut appearance

At the hour of Trump and Putin’s Alaska summit, Shostakovich’s Babi Yar proved a poignant choice at the Proms. Plus, Studio Ghibli’s composer Joe Hisaishi, and thrills at Grimeborn

A divisive staging of Janáček’s domestic opera rounds off Glyndebourne festival by trapping the audience in the mind of its unhappy heroine

Audience participation was key to this spirited production at Longborough festival opera

A trio of world premieres saw this season begin in bravura style

The composer on transcending reality, and his working-class background, through classical music

Plus: Strauss’s ever-shocking masterpiece Salome brings the London Symphony Orchestra season at the Barbican to a close

A new production of the morally ambiguous Semele at the Royal Opera house raises the question. Plus: a Mozart masterpiece and a rare Tchaikovsky

The Philharmonia gives the composer’s strange and impressive card-trick opera a mood of doom. Plus, a masterclass in Schubert

The Russian writer – and his dog – guide this transporting new ‘opera within an opera’ A Visit To Friends

Plus, a journey to the heart of Beethoven’s genius, while Barrie Kosky’s wild take on Handel remains biblically good

The South African singer on discovering opera and playing ‘a bit of a minx’ in Handel’s Semele

A futuristic programme fills the Elbphilharmonie with transcendent piano and a beguiling Boulez. Elsewhere in the city, Unsuk Chin’s latest offering could do with a trim

The new season kicks off with riotous Rossini and the festival’s first ever staging of Wagner’s hallowed swansong

An almost dance-like account of Bach’s Easter Oratorio from Christophe Rousset and co is a reminder of what the UK is missing