Classical music
Can everyone please shut up about Maria Callas?
Rupert Christiansen on the cult of Callas
The miracle of watching a great string quartet perform
Joseph Haydn, it’s generally agreed, invented the string quartet. And having done so, he re-invented it: again and again. Take…
A Radio 3 doc that contains some of the best insults I’ve ever heard
A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the…
Taking the biscuit
The fun starts early in Beckett’s Endgame. Within minutes of opening his mouth, blind bully Hamm decides to starve his…
Sonic enchantment
We used to call it a ‘meat and two veg’ programme, back in my concert planning days: the reliable set…
A performance with teeth
It’s the Edinburgh International Festival, and Barrie’s back in town. Once, Edinburgh was pretty much the only place that you…
The house that Rach built
Fast cars, minimalist design and en suite bathrooms: Richard Bratby visits the composer’s starkly modern Swiss home
Suspended reality
Aix is an odd place. It should be charming, with its dishevelled squares, Busby Berkeley-esque fountains, pretty ochres and pinks.…
Winging it
‘Audience Choice’ was the promise at the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s Sunday matinee Prom, and come on – who could resist…
In defence of the Arts Council
I once knew a monster who said she could not read Proust because there were no figures in Proust with…
Here comes the Hun
Hungarian culture is living through a golden age, says Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and the West has much to learn from it
Comparing notes
The changing face of the BBC Proms
Alsatian string-breaker
One of the most intriguing piano concertos of the late 19th century is unknown to the public – and no…
False notes
Chevalier is a biopic of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, whom you’ve probably never heard of, as I hadn’t. He…
All quiet on the western front
Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since the invasion of Ukraine
Florid flummery
Lightning sometimes strikes twice. English Touring Opera hit topical gold last spring when, wholly by coincidence, they found themselves touring…
A feast for the ears
Sir Hubert Parry was upgraded from knight bachelor to baronet by King Edward VII in 1902, and my goodness he…
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…
Anthem for end times
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
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…
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,…
Child’s play
‘Germany’s greatest artistic asset, its music, is in danger,’ warned The Spectator in June 1937. Reporting from the leading new-music…
Striking a false note
The blurb accompanying the Radio 3 series World of Classical, inviting us to ‘join the dots between classical music traditions…
