What are the top 6 most memorable performances you have ever attended?

[salymap]

Yes I have more but just one please. The only Furtwangler live concert I attended ,at the RAH. I was high in the Grand Circle and looked down on the frail figure conducting a wonderful Brahms Symphony no 4.

[Richard Tarleton]

(and how about a thread 'Concerts I had tickets for but the artists fell ill and never performed again' , e.g. in my case one of Klemperer's (several) 'last' concerts in London in 1971 or, even more poignantly, Jacqueline Du Pre (with Daniel Barenboim) in London a little later?)

Snap! I had a ticket to hear Klemperer conduct Bruckner 7 in one of his "last" concerts - we got Charles Groves instead - were you at that? - and I was at what I think turned out to be du Pré's last ever concert, playing the Elgar with Zubin Mehta in February 1973. Memorable for non-musical reasons. If you'd like to start such a thread I'll be right behind you. Death robbed me of a Sinopoli concert.

[Richard Tarleton]

And just one more for me [incidentally I notice that relatively few of the concerts listed are solo recitals - many of my great moments come from recitals] - a recital by Joaquín Achúcarro in the cloister of El Escoriál - Bach-Busoni Toccata, Beethoven 109, Debussy Preludes, Granados La Maja y el Ruiseñor, Albeniz-Godowski Tango, and El Puerto and El Albaicín from Iberia. Can't think why I didn't include that first time - in many ways the most unforgettable of the lot! It was the closing concert after a week of Universidad Complutense Madrid seminars I'd taken part in, so it was also free to everyone involved!

[amateur51]

Some great memories here - what a wonderful thread

i'll just throw in Shura Cherkassky's 80th birthday recital at Wigmore Hall. As usual it was a wildly eclectic programme and Shura had given us a fair ration of encores. And then there glided past me, sitting on the aisle, a veritable vision: a trolley containing a cake in the shape of a grand piano ... pushed by Danny La Rue in a fur coat! Shura started to oscillate on the spot in delight & the audience roared its approval!

[MrGongGong]

(Today) and i'm not so good at precise dates as others !

The performance of Stockhausens Stimmung in Liverpool Cathedral (Singcircle version I think ?) in the late 1970's
An evening at the Kabuki Theatre in Tokyo in 1998 , the piece I saw had started at 2pm and we went from 7 > 11pm awesome and epic and an extraordinary mixture of ritual and music
Cage/Cunningham dance co at the Liverpool everyman in 1982
Amarnath Mishra playing a morning raga as the sun came up after an all night concert at Dartington in 1984
Ligeti's Atmospheres played by the Philharmonia / Salonen RFH 2003 (ish ?)
Encounters in the Kingdom of Heaven : Trevor Wishart at DMU in Leicester January 18th 2012

[Petrushka]

I couldn't let this thread go by without mentioning a wonderful LSO/Karl Bohm concert at the RAH, December 19 1978 (Weber Freischutz Overture, Schubert 5 and Beethoven 7) and Messiaen Turangalila Symphony Free Trade Hall, Manchester, February 21 1978. These should really have been in my top half dozen.

I met both Bohm and Messiaen after their respective performances and you don't forget things like that do you?

[Nick Armstrong]

I met both Bohm and Messiaen after their respective performances and you don't forget things like that do you?

You don't (having also met Maître M after hearing him improvising at La Trinité)

Ammy. Now tell us the truth. Danny La Rue didn't really wheel Shura Cherkassky's piano-shaped cake up the aisle of the Wigmore Hall, did he. Be honest. You were having a snoozle after a couple of pints of Waggle Dance, weren't you?

[JFLL]

Snap! I had a ticket to hear Klemperer conduct Bruckner 7 in one of his "last" concerts - we got Charles Groves instead - were you at that? - and I was at what I think turned out to be du Pré's last ever concert, playing the Elgar with Zubin Mehta in February 1973. Memorable for non-musical reasons. If you'd like to start such a thread I'll be right behind you. Death robbed me of a Sinopoli concert.

To tell the truth, I can't remember who stood in, Richard. I've just been down to the basement to check my programmes, and there's nothing there for the RFH at that time (Aug/Sept 1971?) , so maybe in my disgust I returned the ticket! I'd just moved to London on £800 per year and was pretty hard up, having to finance an opera obsession (though if I remember rightly, you could get into the gods at Covent Garden for £2.50 -- could that really be??) Your Sinopoli experience reminds me that I'd just got round to thinking of going to see what all the fuss was about with this Tennstedt chappie, and lo and behold it was too late.

[Beef Oven]

I couldn't let this thread go by without mentioning a wonderful LSO/Karl Bohm concert at the RAH, December 19 1978 (Weber Freischutz Overture, Schubert 5 and Beethoven 7) and Messiaen Turangalila Symphony Free Trade Hall, Manchester, February 21 1978. These should really have been in my top half dozen.

I met both Bohm and Messiaen after their respective performances and you don't forget things like that do you?

Wow! You certainly would not forget something like that!

[Barbirollians]

Nothing earlier than the mid 80s for me so

1 Rite of Spring - Sheffield City Hall - CBSO/Rattle 1986 or so

2 Elgar 2 BBC Phil/Groves late 1988 - SCH

3 Donizetti La Fille du Regiment ROH 2010 - Dessay et al

4 Brahms Double Concerto - Menuhin/Rostropovich 1986 RFH

5 Alfred Brendel recital - Bridgwater Hall 2007

6 Martha Argerich - Ravel G Minor Proms 2008

[amateur51]

You don't (having also met Maître M after hearing him improvising at La Trinité)

Ammy. Now tell us the truth. Danny La Rue didn't really wheel Shura Cherkassky's piano-shaped cake up the aisle of the Wigmore Hall, did he. Be honest. You were having a snoozle after a couple of pints of Waggle Dance, weren't you?

As true as I'm sitting here

[amateur51]

I suppose that's what I was getting at - among many many truly excellent concerts, there is a handful which had an extra element in terms of the performance, or one's reaction to it, or some other significance.

What you say about that experience at Covent Garden reminds me of one aspect of the first concert I listed, the Tennstedt/LPO Brahms 4.

I was sitting on the front row of the stalls, in front of the first violins on the inside corner across the gangway from the central block. The Allegro giocoso third movement was being so amazingly played that I had a huge grin on my face, and at one point Tennstedt turned to conduct the firsts... caught sight of my grin out of the corner of his eye, looked straight at me and started grinning himself. He looked back at me again a few seconds later: I was grinning even wider, and I sort of widened my eyes - and Tennstedt did the same back to me with a nod and a wink.

Talk about feeling at one with the performance. Unconditional from that moment on!!

PS The final movement however was as terse and angry as I've ever heard it...

A great story, Caliban. I used to sit in the choir seats at RFH just to watch him. It was all pure magic.

I sat in the stalls for the famous Mahler symphony no 8 and for I think his London debut - I think Ray Minshull had got us all tickets, I was working at Henry Stave at the time. I remember Lazar Berman playing Rachmaninov piano concerto no 3 in the first half and then a staggering Prokofiev symphony no 5. We all knew we had just seen somethuing quite remarkable

[Don Petter]

I think it would be Beecham's last concert in Portsmouth in 1960, closely followed by the Smetana Quartet playing Smetana's 'From My Life' at the Wigmore Hall sometime in the 70s, and third, probably Brendel playing Schubert at the RFH at about the same time.

[Parry1912]

Karajan/BPO Verklärte Nacht & Brahms 1 - RFH

You lucky duck! I've got the Testament CD which is superb.

[Osborn]

Only one - the first time I heard a full symphony orchestra live, as part of a small group taken to the RFH by our music master - who also showed and explained the score of Till Eulenspiegel. It was like being hit by a truck.