Classical music
Chorus of approval
Nabucco, said Giuseppe Verdi, ‘was born under a lucky star’. It was both his last throw of the dice and…
Booster shots of sunlight
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra began the year with a world première. Unsuk Chin’s Second Violin Concerto…
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score is nothing less than the sound of Christmas
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Grade: B It must have been an interesting day in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s press office when Blair Tindall’s memoir…
Liquid silk
That strain again… it’s the morning after the concert and one tune is still there, playing in the head upon…
Whistling the scenery
With Glyndebourne’s The Rake’s Progress, the show starts with David Hockney’s front cloth. The colour, the ingenuity, the visual bravura:…
Satisfaction guaranteed
‘Drammatico’, wrote César Franck over the opening of his Piano Quintet, and you’d better believe he meant it. The score…
Small but perfectly formed
Haydn is looking well — in fact, he’s positively glowing. The dignified pose; the modest, intelligent smile: it’s only when…
Roll over, Beethoven
Ian Pace on musicology’s culture wars
Going for Goldberg
I sometimes think the classical record industry would collapse if it weren’t for the Goldberg Variations. Every month brings more…
Teenage kicks
For a one-hit composer, we hear rather a lot of Pietro Mascagni. His reputation rests on his 1890 debut Cavalleria…
Divine comedy
Arthur Sullivan knew better than to mess with a winning formula. ‘Cox and Box, based on J. Maddison Morton’s farce…
Money, money – and music
Art is supposed to emerge from poverty but extreme wealth does not preclude talent, as the history of composers proves. By Richard Bratby
Carry on Bel Canto
Melons. An absolutely cracking pair of melons, right there on a platter: the centrepiece of the banquet that the chaste,…
The people’s choice
Richard Bratby talks to one of Britain’s most successful impresarios about his promoter’s nose, Arts Council spinelessness and ENO madness
In search of an ending
There are many Symphonies No. 10 by Gustav Mahler, or none. The situation is rare, if not unique, in the…
Master of the notes
Stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the choir loft is probably the last thing you’d notice. ‘Loft’ is, frankly, a stretch…
Mozart’s footnotes
There are worse fates than posthumous obscurity. When Mozart visited Munich in October 1777, he was initially reluctant to visit…
Where to start with Ethel Smyth
I’m reminded of an old Irish joke. A tourist approaches a local for directions to Dublin. The local, after much…
Without borders
Community music-making is the unifying jewel in the British crown, says James MacMillan
Terrifying divas and lesbian separatists
The promise of the internet was supposed to be thus: you could be your own bizarre, inappropriate self, and you…
Alive and kicking
Rachmaninov’s First Symphony begins with a snarl, and gets angrier. A menacing skirl from the woodwinds, a triple-fortissimo blast from…
Colourisations and scale models
Another week, another online concert; and since orchestral music seems likely to be confined to screens and stereos for a…
From screen to stage
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
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
