Conducting
‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’
Richard Bratby talks to Birmingham Opera Company’s new music director Alpesh Chauhan about his Brummie roots, Bruckner and how his BAME heritage is a non-story
The truth about Wilhelm Furtwängler
The morning after the first night of Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides in May 1995, I received a call from Otto…
The morality of conducting
Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…
Boulez est mort
Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to…
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…
Wholly German art
Philip Hensher admires an old-fashioned conductor who unashamedly favours the great German composers — and Wagner in particular
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
Dudamel’s dilemma
On 8 March 2013, Gustavo Dudamel stood by the coffin of the Marxist autocrat Hugo Chavez and conducted the Simon…
Ebola shakes
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…
Irresistible zing and pizzazz
Philip Hensher on the tragically short life of the ebullient and multi-talented musician, Constant Lambert
