Classical music
Fantasy on ice
In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in…
My Schubert cruise was a transport of delight
Michael Henderson is transported to raptures on a Schubert cruise
Deadlier than the male
Last week a 17-year-old girl forced the Edexcel exam board to change its A-level music syllabus to include the work…
Bad conduct
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
Shtumming the spiel
London may cry foul over Hamlet’s misplaced to-be-ing and not-to-be-ing but Edinburgh is in raptures over a Magic Flute which…
Orchestral infallibility
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Diary
There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music…
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
Première league
This year the Proms are to stage 21 world premières and 11 European, UK or London premières. It is good…
‘Oh André!’
André Rieu is a demigod among classical performing artists – and my mother loves him
Forward thinking
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
Evolutionary road
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
Mexican wave
Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in…
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is talented almost beyond measure. His Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and stupidly named Orchestre Révolutionnaire…
Mistress of modernism
What classical music really needs is more performers like Barbara Hannigan. Philip Clark meets theself-conducting soprano
Three cheers
The new controller of Radio Three, Alan Davey, was on Feedback this week (Radio Four) talking to listeners about his…
The legend returns
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
His remastered voice
Damian Thompson on the audio anoraks rescuing some of the greatest recordings ever made
Wife swap
My impression that Bach has come to rival Shakespeare as a flawless reference point in the cultural life of the…
Glad to be Grey
Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the…
Dudamel’s dilemma
On 8 March 2013, Gustavo Dudamel stood by the coffin of the Marxist autocrat Hugo Chavez and conducted the Simon…
Saved by Spotify
We have all read about the current woeful state of the CD industry — how it is 28 per cent…
Crime and punishment
In one of the more peculiar concerts that I have been to at the Royal Festival Hall, Vladimir Jurowski conducted…
Stolen pleasures
I’ve never been into shoplifting, though I once had a friend who was. And, no, before you ask, I’m not…
Dirty dancing
Vienna’s New Year’s Day concert is still tarnished by its Nazi origins, says Norman Lebrecht
