The Mozarts of ad music
Richard Bratby meets the hidden men and women composing melodies to make you buy
How real is the performing arts exodus?
Richard Bratby on the post-Covid exodus of talent from the performing arts
Three new releases that show the classical recording industry is alive and well
Rachmaninov’s First Symphony begins with a snarl, and gets angrier. A menacing skirl from the woodwinds, a triple-fortissimo blast from…
Perfect English songs in fresh new colours: Roderick Williams sings Butterworth
Another week, another online concert; and since orchestral music seems likely to be confined to screens and stereos for a…
The two composers who defined British cinema also wrote inspired operas
It’s my new lockdown ritual. Switch on the telly, cue up the menu and scroll down to where the vintage…
From bad joke to 21st-century classic: the best recordings of Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
The music we need right now: James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio reviewed
The two most depressing words in contemporary classical music? That’s easy: holy minimalism. I know, I know. Lots of people…
There’s no better sonic hangover cure: New Year’s Day Concert reviewed
The best moment in the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual New Year’s Day Concert comes after the end of the advertised programme.…
Hear the greatest Parsifal of our time sing like a Muppet: Jonas Kaufmann’s Christmas album reviewed
In classical music circles, Christmas arrives with the overture to Handel’s Messiah. Or so they’ll tell you. In truth, festivities…
Refined and dreamy: CBSO centenary concerts reviewed
For an orchestra to lose one anniversary concert may be regarded as unfortunate. To lose two? Welcome to 2020. The…
The beautiful, haunted symphonies of Franz Schmidt
The sounds that Franz Schmidt made while learning the trumpet were pretty much unbearable, or so the story goes. In…
Turn it up and feel the walls shake: John Wilson's Respighi reviewed
Grade: A The strings rear up, there’s a flash of steel from the trumpets, and ten seconds into Respighi’s Feste…
A new opera that deserves more than one outing: Royal Opera's New Dark Age reviewed
It’s quite a title sequence. Puccini swells on the soundtrack and words flash before your eyes. ‘Ecstatic!’ ‘Spellbound!’ ‘Passionate!’ ‘Dazzled!’…
A silly, bouncy delight: Glyndebourne's In the Market for Love reviewed
Offenbach at Glyndebourne! Short of Die Soldaten with a picnic break or a period-instrument revival of Jerry Springer: The Opera,…
I pounded my car horn like a Neapolitan cabbie: ENO's drive-in Bohème reviewed
The email from English National Opera was blunt: ‘Your arrival time is 18.25. If you arrive outside your allocated time…
Affectionate and unthreatening, just like usual: Last Night of the Proms reviewed
The Last Night of the Proms came and went, and it was pretty much as anyone might have predicted, if…
Why orchestras are sounding better than ever under social-distancing
Our college choirmaster had a trick that he liked to deploy when he sensed that we were phoning it in.…
Couldn't the BBC have filled at least some of the seats? First night of the Proms reviewed
The Royal Albert Hall, as Douglas Adams never wrote, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely,…
Enter the parallel universe that is the Lucerne Festival
There wasn’t going to be a Lucerne Festival this year. The annual month-long squillion-dollar international beano got cancelled, along with…
The joy of going to a real concert: OHP's Heart of Delight reviewed
I went to a concert! Not a livestream or download: a real concert, with real musicians, a real conductor, a…
‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’: an interview with conductor Alpesh Chauhan
Richard Bratby talks to Birmingham Opera Company’s new music director Alpesh Chauhan about his Brummie roots, Bruckner and how his BAME heritage is a non-story
Art tackles social distancing and, for once, actually wins: Philharmonia Sessions reviewed
First there were the home recitals: musicians playing solo Bach in front of their bookshelves, wonkily captured on iPhones. Next…
Model villages aren't just for kids
Model villages deliver a cheerful jolt to unexamined notions about our own place – and size – in the world, says Richard Bratby
Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain's oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Richard Bratby on Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which has taken on everyone from gang leaders to Derek Hatton
The musical event of the year: Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 Special Broadcasts reviewed
Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…
