The Gesualdo Six, St Martin-in-the-Fields online review - perfectly polished polyphony

★★★★ THE GESUALDO SIX, ST MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS Six (and seven) sing six English Renaissance motets 

Six (and seven) sing six English Renaissance motets

For their concert debut at St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Gesualdo Six brought a programme of English motets for the final instalment in the venue's trio of Easter concerts. Having come together for a one-off project in 2014, singing Carlo Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories for Maundy Thursday, this young, all-male ensemble found their vocal chemistry worked so well they carried on making music together.

Bach St John Passions from Oxford and Stockholm online review – theatrical drive from Gardiner, interiority under Harding

★★★★ BACH ST JOHN PASSION Dramatic Gardiner and inwardness from Harding

Fine young English Evangelist and Christ versus Gerhaher, Hallenberg and others

Last Easter, viewing options were limited: no-one who saw it will forget a version of Bach’s St John Passion from the church where it was first performed in 1724, Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, with an idiosyncratic tenor taking all the parts other than the chorales – live from a quintet and streamed in from around the world – and accompanied only by organ/harpsichord and percussion. But the real thing has been so longed for.

Bach St John Passion, Bach Collegium Japan, Suzuki, Barbican review - intense pain and dancing consolation

★★★★ ST JOHN PASSION, BACH COLLEGIUM JAPAN, SUZUKI Intense pain, dancing consolation

Fast-moving but never rushed, a visceral approach powerfully unfolds a saga of suffering

Eyes watering, heart thumping, hands clenched: no, not The Thing, but a spontaneous reaction to the opening of Bach's St John Passion in the urgent hands of Masaaki Suzuki. How his Bach Collegium oboes seared with their semitonal clashes while bass lines throbbed with pain, before the chorus added a different, supernatural turn of the screw.

Military Wives review - the surprising true story of the women who rocked the charts

★★★★ MILITARY WIVES 'Full Monty' director Peter Cattaneo returns with another feel-good Britcom

'Full Monty' director Peter Cattaneo returns with another feel-good BritCom

There’s a lot of plucky British charm to Military Wives, from Peter Cattaneo, the director who won the nation's heart with his debut film The Full Monty over two decades ago.

Bach Sunday with the Suzukis, RAM / Appl, AAM, Milton Court review - father, son and Holy Ghost

BACH SUNDAY WITH THE SUZUKIS Father, son and Holy Ghost

From the grandest beginnings of the B Minor Mass at lunchtime to solo cantatas at night

Not long after noon on Sunday, strange bells began ringing. In just 11 bars, Bach summons pairs of flutes, oboes and violas da gamba against pizzicato strings and continuo to tintinnabulate against the alto's recitative lines about a "vibrating clang" to "pierce our marrows and our veins". These hallucinatory sounds and harmonies could have been composed yesterday. Instead they're at the service of a 1727 lamentation mourning the death of a princess.

Mahler's Eighth, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - a symphony of 600

★★★★★ MAHLER'S EIGHTH, CBSO, GRAZINYTE-TYLA Stunning centenary-year launch

A rite of spring as a great orchestra launches its centenary year in epic style

“Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound” wrote Gustav Mahler of his Eighth Symphony. “There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.” It’s an image that captures the impossible scale and mind-boggling ambition of this so called “Symphony of a Thousand”.

Bowers-Broadbent, Theatre of Voices, Kings Place - grit needed in the oyster

★★★ BOWERS-BROADBENT, THEATRE OF VOICES, KINGS PLACE Grit needed in the oyster

Meditative magic for the Nature Unwrapped celebrations, but some conflict is necessary

Not everyone who flocked to Day Two's evening concert in Kings Place's year-long Nature Unwrapped: Sounds of Life celebrations will have realised that they were catching parts two and three of a trilogy.

Williams, LPO, Alsop, RFH review - sleek lines and pastoral tones

★★★★ WILLIAMS, LPO, ALSOP, RFH Power and precision in all-British programme

Power and precision in all-British programme, but the music retains its poetry

The London Philharmonic’s Isle of Noises, a year-long festival dedicated to music of the British Isles, drew towards its close with this programme of Butterworth, Elgar and Walton. Marin Alsop was a good choice to lead, especially for Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. Although well-known for her performances of British music, she’s not one to wallow in pastoral whimsy.

The Apostles, LPO, Brabbins, RFH review - Elgar's melancholy New Testament snapshots

★★★★ THE APOSTLES, LPO, BRABBINS, RFH Elgar's melancholy New Testament snapshots

Perfection of movement and solo line-up in a problem oratorio

The Apostles is a depressing work, mostly in a good way. Elgar's one good aspirational theme of mystic chordal progressions is easily outnumbered by a phantasmal parade of dying falls, hauntingly shaped and orchestrated. After The Dream of Gerontius, this ostensibly more clear-cut oratorio has less sense of form; it's fragmentary or modern, according to taste.