Mendelssohn
Chorus of approval
Nabucco, said Giuseppe Verdi, ‘was born under a lucky star’. It was both his last throw of the dice and…
Bigamists, lunatics and adventurers
The world of 19th-century British music was raucous, but are there any masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered? wonders Richard Bratby
Mistaken identity
This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…
Sex on legs
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
Bored by Brahms
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
Salieri’s revenge
Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned…
The power of hate
It’s all gone now, of course. Not just the magazines themselves, but the legendary bile of old-school rock criticism
Bach triumphant
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the…
