Conducting

‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’: an interview with conductor Alpesh Chauhan

15 August 2020 9:00 am

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

Wilhelm Furtwängler shaking hands with Hitler after a concert in 1939. Photo: Ullstein Bild/ Getty Images

The truth about Wilhelm Furtwängler

20 October 2018 9:00 am

The morning after the first night of Ronald Harwood’s Taking Sides in May 1995, I received a call from Otto…

The maestro could hear if a single player was doing something wrong, even in the most noisy tutti

The morality of conducting

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…

Spare us this unanimous chorus of praise for Pierre Boulez

16 January 2016 9:00 am

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

12 December 2015 9:00 am

You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…

Christian Thielemann

The old-fashioned greatness of Christian Thielemann

15 August 2015 9:00 am

Philip Hensher admires an old-fashioned conductor who unashamedly favours the great German composers — and Wagner in particular

The Heckler: why does John Eliot Gardiner have to be so rude?

2 May 2015 9:00 am

Sir John Eliot Gardiner is talented almost beyond measure. His Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and stupidly named Orchestre Révolutionnaire…

‘I find my comfort zone in the wilderness’: Barbara Hannigan

Classical music doesn't need to change. It just needs more performers like Barbara Hannigan

25 April 2015 9:00 am

What classical music really needs is more performers like Barbara Hannigan. Philip Clark meets theself-conducting soprano

Classical music's greatest political butt-kissers: Dudamel, Gergiev and Rattle

14 February 2015 9:00 am

On 8 March 2013, Gustavo Dudamel stood by the coffin of the Marxist autocrat Hugo Chavez and conducted the Simon…

The man who discovered Ebola

31 January 2015 9:00 am

By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…

Constant Lambert at the piano

The wit, wisdom and womanising of Constant Lambert

24 May 2014 9:00 am

Philip Hensher on the tragically short life of the ebullient and multi-talented musician, Constant Lambert