I recently discovered some great classical concert channels on YouTube so I thought I’d share the links here. Of course it helps if you’ve got good desktop speakers, - I have the KEF LSX II, which I’m very happy with -, or good headphones. All of these are public broadcasting channels, so the concerts are uninterrupted by commercials.

If only more orchestras would upload their concerts to YouTube. The Berliner Philharmoniker, the New York, Boston, London etc. Philharmonic only upload short snippets. If an institution is publicly funded, whether an orchestra or a theatre company, its performances should be recorded and made publicly available, for the record and to allow people who cannot make it to the event to see or hear it. So much new music by contemporary composers is only performed a couple of times to then disappear into oblivion. I've seen many amazing dance, theatre and opera productions, which future generations and people in other countries cannot take note of, because they were not recorded and if they were, they're not available online, which is a real shame.

Of course, I highly recommend attending a concert if you can, even though I don’t do so myself as often as I wish. If you’ve never been to a concert you don’t know how a grand piano, a violin, a cello, a string quartet or an orchestra really sounds. A grand piano or a violin can fill an entire concert hall. That should tell you something.

France Musique concerts. Possibly my favourite YouTube channel for classical concerts. A mix of canonical and contemporary works. I was delighted to find this recording of Portulan, a chamber music cycle by Tristan Murail. I own the cd, but this concert actually includes two additional compositions.

hr-Sinfonieorchester / Frankfurt Radio Symphony. High quality recordings of popular classics: Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, Bach, Bartok, Mozart, Strauss, Sibelius, Brahms and so on. Also included is this awesome integral performance of Les espaces acoustiques by Gérard Grisey, one of the masterpieces of the late twentieth century.

AVROTROS Klassiek. Wonderful recordings from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam (incl. Brahms, Sibelius, Grieg, Rachmaninoff, Dvorak, Mozart, Beethoven, Elgar and more) as well as a rich selection of recordings from the International Chamber Music Festival in Utrecht including several performances by the amazing Janine Jansen.

Ensemble Intercontemporain. The YouTube channel of my favourite contemporary music ensemble also features some concerts by Stockhausen, Lachenmann, Reich, Varèse, Crumb, Ives, Ligeti and of course Pierre Boulez.

Ensemble Musikfabrik also has a YouTube channel with some performances of Cage, Xenakis, Feldman and others including this gem by Enno Poppe. It's also available on cd.

ARD Klassik. The various German public broadcasting channels, NDR, WDR and SWR, recently merged their classical music YouTube channels. It features superb concerts by all the usual suspects (Mahler, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Bruckner, Stravinsky, Schumann, Ravel etc.), but also American composers such as Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein). Here's a recording of John Adams' "Fearful Symmetries".

If you subscribe to YouTube Premium or have Adblocker installed I highly recommend gɹinblat and sister channel grinblɐt, otherwise the concert will be interrupted by commercials, which is supremely annoying. Both are wonderful channels for discovering new music.

Anna Thorvaldsdóttir: Catamorphosis by the NDR Elbphilharmonie.

Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto by the London Symphony Orchestra.