Classical music
Where to start with the music of Ethel Smyth
I’m reminded of an old Irish joke. A tourist approaches a local for directions to Dublin. The local, after much…
Community music-making is the jewel in the British crown
Community music-making is the unifying jewel in the British crown, says James MacMillan
My favourite failed podcasts
The promise of the internet was supposed to be thus: you could be your own bizarre, inappropriate self, and you…
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…
British opera companies and orchestras must start investing in native talent
Brexit and Covid have pushed us out of the common musical market and thrown us back on homegrown sprouts. Good, says Norman Lebrecht
Most artistic careers end in failure. Why does no one talk about this?
Rosie Millard dispels the myth that persistence is always rewarded
Alfred Brendel the Dadaist
How many people are celebrating the fact that, last week, one of Europe’s most inspired writers about music, modern art…
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.…
Alan Rusbridger on the joys of four-hand piano
One of the few social activities not yet prohibited under lockdown laws is four-handed piano playing. I don’t mean sitting…
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…
How we became a nation of choirs and carollers
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
The grotesque unevenness of Mozart’s Requiem
It is amazing what fine performances you can get beamed to your computer these days. Slightly less amazing is the…
Unobtrusively filmed, powerfully performed but still unsatisfying: LSO's Bluebeard reviewed
The timing couldn’t be better. Just as the gates clang shut on another national lockdown, trapping us all indefinitely with…
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,…
Why did Balakirev's beautiful, inventive works go out of fashion?
Anyone who invited the Russian composer Mily Balakirev to dinner had to be jolly careful about the fish they served.…
I don’t know when I’ve been more moved: Ora Singers at Tate Modern reviewed
It’s the breath I miss most. The moment when a shuffling group of men and women in scruffy concert blacks…
The forgotten female composer fêted by Mozart and Haydn
Selina Mills on Maria Theresia von Paradis, the gifted but forgotten 18th-century composer, whose story will finally be told in a new chamber opera
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.…
The death of the Southbank Centre
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
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,…
