contemporary music
The liberating, invigorating music of Pierre Boulez
‘When you’re not offensive in life, you obtain absolutely nothing,’ declares a twinkly-eyed Pierre Boulez in one of the archive…
The liberating force of musical modernism
It’s Arvo Part’s 90th birthday year, which is good news if you like your minimalism glum, low and very, very…
A dancing, weightless garland of gems: Stephen Hough’s piano concerto reviewed
Stephen Hough’s new piano concerto is called The World of Yesterday but its second ever performance offered a dispiriting glimpse…
Spreads emotions like jam: Festen, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera Festen opened at Covent Garden earlier this month, and reader, I messed up. I broke my…
Opera North’s Flying Dutchman scores a full house in cliché bingo
The overture to The Flying Dutchman opens at gale force. There’s nothing like it; Mendelssohn and Berlioz both painted orchestral…
The thankless art of the librettist
Next week, after the première of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera Festen, the cast and conductor will take their bow. All…
Classical music has much to learn from Liverpool
They do things their own way in Liverpool; they always have. In 1997 the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra launched a…
The BBC Singers Centenary Concert was toe-curling
When does a new opera enter the repertoire? Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert has only had a couple of UK productions…
The Stockhausen work that is worth braving
Grade: A- One of the best one-liners attributed to Sir Thomas Beecham refers to the stridently avant-garde Karlheinz Stockhausen: ‘I’ve…
Every crumb of Kurtag’s music is a feast: Endgame, at the Proms, reviewed
The fun starts early in Beckett’s Endgame. Within minutes of opening his mouth, blind bully Hamm decides to starve his…
A brilliantly cruel Cosi and punkish Petrushka but the Brits disappoint: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence reviewed
Aix is an odd place. It should be charming, with its dishevelled squares, Busby Berkeley-esque fountains, pretty ochres and pinks.…
The future of opera – I hope: WNO’s Candide reviewed
Bernstein’s Candide is the operetta that ought to work, but never quite does. Voltaire’s featherlight cakewalk through human misery, set…
The West has much to learn from Hungarian culture
Hungarian culture is living through a golden age, says Igor Toronyi-Lalic, and the West has much to learn from it
How Ukrainians are making the lives of even anti-Putin Russian artists impossible
Zoe Strimpel talks to the anti-Putin Russian artists who have been cancelled since the invasion of Ukraine
Apocalypse chic: Autechre, Last Days and Southbank's Xenakis day reviewed
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Grey, grey and more grey: Aida, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
Grey. More grey. So very, very grey. That’s the main visual impression left by Robert Carsen’s new production of Verdi’s…
A classic in the making: Glyndebourne's Poulenc double bill reviewed
One morning in the 20th century, Thérèse wakes up next to her husband and announces that she’s a feminist. Hubby,…
An intimate, lucid and unforgettable new James MacMillan work
On Tuesday night I was at the world première of a motet by Sir James MacMillan and I don’t think…
Claude Vivier ought to be a modern classic. Why isn't he?
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
Why I booed Birtwistle
Keith Burstein recalls a key moment in the battle for emancipation from the ivory tower of atonalism
Igor Levit deserved his standing ovation; Shostakovich, even more so
Music and politics don’t mix, runs the platitude. Looks a bit tattered now, doesn’t it? For Soviet musicians, of course,…
The genius of Iannis Xenakis
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
Expectations were met and then exceeded: Arooj Aftab, at Celtic Connections, reviewed
We gathered on a freezing Sunday night, inside a barrel-vaulted church designed in the 1890s by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, to…
The music we need right now: James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio reviewed
The two most depressing words in contemporary classical music? That’s easy: holy minimalism. I know, I know. Lots of people…
