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;…
I'm still not wholly convinced by Kirill Petrenko: Berlin Phil's Digital Concert Hall reviewed
At the start of Elgar’s Second Symphony the full orchestra hovers, poised. It pulls back; and then, like a dam…
Drunk singers, Ravel on film and prime Viennese operetta: the addictive joys of classical YouTube
The full addictive potential of classical YouTube needs to be experienced to be understood. And let’s be honest, there are…
It costs a lot of money to look this cheap: Metropolitan Opera’s At-Home Gala reviewed
Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the world’s opera houses currently dark, the New York Metropolitan Opera tackled the…
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
The marvel of Mozart’s letters
It’s 1771, you’re in Milan, and your 14-year-old genius son has just premièred his new opera. How do you reward…
The joy of Haydn's string quartets – here are the best recordings
As Joseph Haydn was getting out of bed on the morning of 10 May 1809, a cannonball landed in his…
Bleak humour, resourcefulness and wit: Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Quarantine Soirées reviewed
There’s a certain merit in bluntness. ‘Quarantine Soirées’ was what the Budapest Festival Orchestra called its response to the crisis,…
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