Classical music
Dudamel’s Amériques made The Rite of Spring sound like Einaudi
Apparently it’s called ‘expectation management’. Pollux, Esa-Pekka Salonen’s new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, takes its name from…
An unmitigated triumph: Salome at Opera North reviewed
Salome is my favourite opera by Richard Strauss, the only one where there is no danger, at any point, of…
Why be so frightened of Enoch Powell’s speech now?
It was a provocative decision by the producers of Archive on 4, 50 Years On: Rivers of Blood (Nathan Gower…
Martha Kearney’s arrival at Today is a breath of fresh air
Like a breath of fresh air Martha Kearney has arrived on Radio 4’s Today programme, taking over from Sarah Montague…
Mozart died too late rather than too early. Discuss.
Glenn Gould used to say that Mozart died too late rather than too early. The remark was intended to get…
Iceland’s national composer returns from oblivion
The lur is a horn, modelled in bronze after a number of 3,000-year-old instruments discovered at various archaeological sites across…
How Debussy slipped past Wagner into the unknown
A spectre haunted the first weekend of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Debussy Festival: the spectre of Richard Wagner.…
A short history of French musical decadence
My two attempts to see Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Guildhall School were frustrated by the weather. Forced back…
Remembering one of the best – and bitchiest – pianists who ever lived
I’m unlucky with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata. Twice in the past year I’ve bolted for the exit as soon the pianist…
The sex lives of conductors
I once knew a great conductor who claimed that he never boarded a plane to a new orchestra without a…
Debussy, Tippett and Wagner: the musical treats of 2018
Claude Debussy died on 25 March 1918 to the sound of explosions. Four days earlier, the Kaiser’s army had deployed…
The 280-mile walk that made Bach who he was
It was in his organ loft at Arnstadt that I began my acquaintance with Johann Sebastian Bach — with JSB,…
Gorgeous but exhausting: Jurowski/LPO at Royal Festival Hall reviewed
To get a flavour of Joseph Marx’s An Autumn Symphony, picture the confectionery counter in a grand Viennese café. Beneath…
The Chinese classical-music revolution up close
On a bullet train out of Shanghai, a nuclear family catches my eye. The father, weather-beaten and wearing an ill-fitting…
Embarrassing – but electrifying: Bernstein 100 reviewed
‘There is something enviable about the utter lack of inhibition with which Leonard Bernstein carries on,’ wrote the critic of…
Salon Strauss
An opera without singers, a Strauss orchestra of just 16, and an early music ensemble playing Mahler: welcome to the…
Speed limit
Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through…
Make mine a double
If two concert pianists are performing a work written for two grand pianos, there are two ways you can position…
Vice and virtue
‘Can the ultimate betrayal ever be forgiven?’ screams the publicity for The Judas Passion, transforming a Biblical drama into a…
Beauty and the beast
I was going to start with a little moan. About the shouty marketing, the digital diarrhoea, the sycophantic drivel, which,…
Director’s cut
Much fuss has been made of the title given to Sir Simon Rattle on arrival at the London Symphony Orchestra.…
The sound of no hands clapping
‘We’re going to live for ever!’ declares Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler at the end of Ken Russell’s 1974 biopic.…
Ave, Maria
Anyone who thinks that an artist’s life is irrelevant to their artistic achievement, and for that matter anyone who thinks…
Bowled over by Bruckner
The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work,…
‘Smile, segue and shut up’
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…
