Classical
The lady on the No. 26
I was sceptical when the lady on the bus to Reading town centre told me that her father knew Liszt.…
Screen time
A classical concert programme is like a set menu, and for this palate the most tempting orchestral offering in the…
Mersey boy
Daniel Barenboim was supposed to perform with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra earlier this month. His recent health concerns made…
Blowing hot…
Temperature records for Los Angeles in the summer of 1945 are patchy, but 90 in the shade seems to have…
The greatest showman
Only boring people are bored by Ravel’s Boléro. True, the composer – the slyest of wits – left his share…
Sexy time all the way
A hotel bellboy, the story goes, discovered George Best in a luxury suite surrounded by scantily clad lovelies and empty…
The eyes have it
Do you remember Osvaldo Golijov? Two decades ago he was classical music’s Next Big Thing: a credible postmodernist with a…
Miniature rite of spring
Imagine a folk dance without music. Actually, you don’t have to: poke about on YouTube and you’ll find footage from…
Fifty shades of grey
Grey. More grey. So very, very grey. That’s the main visual impression left by Robert Carsen’s new production of Verdi’s…
Losing the plot
Leos Janacek disliked long operas, and the first act of The Makropulos Affair is a masterclass in how to set…
A fine romance
One swallow might not make a summer, but it certainly helps rounds the season off. ‘Perhaps, like the swallow, you…
Hail, César!
In the Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, a Broadway hoofer is forced to work at a community college,…
Sex-change soufflé
One morning in the 20th century, Thérèse wakes up next to her husband and announces that she’s a feminist. Hubby,…
Hot stuff
One legacy of lockdown in the classical music world has been the sheer length of the 21-22 season. In a…
Mourning glory
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
Lilacs out of the dead land
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
G-force
Imagine growing up with a whole orchestra as your plaything. Richard Strauss’s father was the principal horn of the Munich…
The Muppet show
There are many things to enjoy in the Royal Opera’s revival of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, but perhaps the most surprising…
Colour in the gloom
Music and politics don’t mix, runs the platitude. Looks a bit tattered now, doesn’t it? For Soviet musicians, of course,…
After the love has gone
Utopia, Limited (1893) is a rare bird, and one that every Gilbert and Sullivan completist simply has to bag. The…
Bird brained
Blame it on Serge Diaghilev. Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908 and never saw the première of his last opera, The Golden…
Away with the fairies
Scottish Opera’s new production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to open in midwinter. Snow falls, fairies hurl snowballs…
Me time
I think it was when she leaned forward and balanced on one leg that Barbara Hannigan jumped the shark. It…
Too hot to handle
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
Refugees from Moominland
Spoiler alert. The last words in Janacek’s The Cunning Little Vixen come from a child playing a frog. The story…
