Proms 2022: everything you need to know
The one that shows the triumph of art over adversity Prom number TBC, July 31 Canadian-Ukrainian musician Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts the newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra whose…
The quiet revolution at the National Youth Orchestra
Almost half of the players in the main National Youth Orchestra began their journey through the Inspire scheme, and Alexander really wants to stress that it’s in…
Here’s the best way to enjoy Vaughan Williams
Since I wrote in January about Ralph Vaughan Williams’s impending 150th birthday in October, there has been a tidal wave of activity to celebrate him. His music…
Fernando, Re di Castiglia, London Handel Festival, review: one strictly for scholars
The rediscovery of Handel’s operas, neglected for so long after his death, has been one of the great musical developments of our time. The realisation of the…
Cinema Paradiso, the Maestro and me: who was the ‘real’ Ennio Morricone?
Even if you don’t know Ennio Morricone’s name, you’ll know his music, which has scored nearly 500 films. From the heavenly choral uplift of Roland Joffé’s The…
Our knee-jerk fear of nationalism is childish – just look at classical music
Living as I do in the boundary-less world of the middle-class “brain worker”, much of it spent online, I am as likely as anyone to forget the…
The power (and pitfalls) of nationalism in music
Living as I do in the boundary-less world of the middle-class “brain worker”, much of it spent online, I am as likely as anyone to forget the…
The Great Passion by James Runcie review: how tragedy inspired Bach’s masterpiece
“Don’t cry for me, I’m going where music is born,” the devout J S Bach supposedly said on his deathbed. But James Runcie’s new novel explores the place…
Forget Ulysses and The Waste Land, this was the real birth of modernism
Those intentions were further fulfilled a year later, when Stravinsky – by then brimming with self-confidence born of his success – provided the music for another of…
Why we must keep playing Russian music
It was inevitable. Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, that celebration of Russia’s successful defence against Napoleon’s invading army, has itself become a casualty of war. The Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra…
Sex, rage and wigs: the baroque’n’roll life of JS Bach
It is, of course, perverse to write a novel about one of the greatest musicians who has ever lived. Johann Sebastian Bach is the voice of God in…
Valery Gergiev – a great career derailed by a friendship with Putin
Gergiev has sometimes demonstrated his loyalty to Putin’s regime in extravagant ways. In March 2018 he cancelled a performance of Wagner’s Siegfried at the Mariinsky Theatre so…
How do you stage Schubert up a mountain?
But the project survived only because so many of the participants believed in it so strongly. There was no time to waste, because the five-storey Julier Tower,…
Barbara Hannigan turns La voix humaine, a timeless opera, into a narcissistic gimmick
Opera plots are seldom more straightforwardly non-existent than that of Francis Poulenc’s 1959 one-woman show La voix humaine, a compact 40-minute work evoking the agonised last phone-call…
How Brahms’s Requiem broke the rules – with extraordinary results
Johannes Brahms, like many composers, rarely talked about his inspirations. Some composers are unsure of the place an idea has in the creative process, or cannot explain…
Alexandre Kantorow, poet of the piano, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City Halls, Glasgow ★★★★☆ This concert of Carl Nielsen’s pivotal Symphony No 3 (his “Sinfonia espansiva”) marks the beginning of the BBC Scottish…
Ghosts in the Ruins, Coventry Cathedral, review: Nitin Sawhney’s choral work is too politely Anglican
This year, it’s Coventry’s turn to be UK City of Culture, and Ghosts in the Ruins was clearly intended to be the year’s big symbolic event, where…
A majestic BBC tribute to the Nazis’ victims, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City Halls, Glasgow ★★★★☆ This concert of Carl Nielsen’s pivotal Symphony No 3 (his “Sinfonia espansiva”) marks the beginning of the BBC Scottish…
Eviscerate the BBC if you wish – but save one jewel from the ruins
Certainly, people who care about serious cultural broadcasting need to think about this now, and to start to plan. By far the most important of Lord Reith’s…
Encore! What it’s like to take part in a 24-hour, non-stop classical concert
Some might say 24 hours of non-stop cutting-edge music consisting mostly of electronic hums and swoops with weird writhing shapes projected onto the wall is a recipe…
A magnificent, immense sound from a great Brünnhilde-to-be, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
This concert of Carl Nielsen’s pivotal Symphony No 3 (his “Sinfonia espansiva”) marks the beginning of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s series of the great Danish composer’s…
Gerald Finley and Julius Drake raise the roof at the Wigmore, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
With the Omicron variant wearking havoc and bad news all around, a New Year tonic is sorely needed. On Sunday night, the English Concert provided it, with…
A magical premiere from Simon Rattle and the LSO, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
With the Omicron variant wearking havoc and bad news all around, a New Year tonic is sorely needed. On Sunday night, the English Concert provided it, with…
The National Youth Orchestra proves yet again what a marvel it is, plus the pick of January’s classical concerts
With the Omicron variant wearking havoc and bad news all around, a New Year tonic is sorely needed. On Sunday night, the English Concert provided it, with…
The English Concert, Wigmore Hall, review: spinning Handel’s clichés into pure gold
The English Concert, Wigmore Hall ★★★★★ With the Omicron variant wearking havoc and bad news all around, a New Year tonic is sorely needed. On Sunday night,…