classical music & opera
-
Multi-Story Orchestra/Bold Tendencies – Proms shifts gear with car-park concertChristopher Stark led a toe-tingling programme of Steve Reich that was as notable for its playing as for its place -
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: 'Classical music isn't elitist – the problem is it's expensive'This year’s BBC Young Musician winner has had to balance revising for exams with preparing for his Royal Festival Hall concerto debut. And then there’s finding time to beat his brother at football ...
-
Ugly heckle disrupts the idyll of Austria's SchubertiadeIan Bostridge – with no little help from his audience – silenced a heckler at the Austrian festival that celebrates the best of international musical talent. Alan Rusbridger reports -
South African opera house accused of exploiting black singersChorus members were dismissed after challenging discrepancies in pay for appearing abroad in opera set in colonial Africa
-
Amateur orchestras: celebrating the Great British play offAmateur orchestras are the lifeblood of our musical culture, says Paul Daniel, judge of the BBC’s new series searching for the country’s best
-
Franz Xaver Mozart and Clementi: Piano Concertos CD review – out of his father’s shadowHoward Shelley (piano, director), Sinfonieorchester St Gallen
(Hyperion) -
Maxwell Davies: An Orkney Wedding, With Sunrise CD review – a worthy portraitSean Shibe (guitar), Scottish Chamber Orchestra/Gernon
(Linn)
facing the music
-
Aleksandar Marković: 'Abbey Road is the best and most inspired pop record ever made'Opera North’s music director on wishing he was a fly on the wall to see Wagner compose, why MP3 players are spoiling us for live music and his would-be career as a sci-fi author
-
Tai Murray: 'Listening to music on headphones, I have to remember not to break into interpretive dance'The US violinist on Beethoven, Eminem and her compulsion for interpretive dance
-
-
Daniel Barenboim on ageing, mistakes and why Israel and Iran are twin brothersAt 73, the conductor is still lobbying presidents and bellowing at the violins in five languages. But has his passion project – an orchestra of players from across the Middle East – achieved any real change? We meet him in Buenos Aires
-
A musical tour of Europe’s great cities: HelsinkiIn the fourth in our series, we look at the Finnish capital and its music
-
you may have missed
-
Musical families: 'She takes a lot more liberties when she’s playing with me!'What’s it like to play a cello concerto written by your brother? To conduct your wife? To sing alongside your daughter? Michael Hann meets the classical musicians who are keeping it all in the family this Proms season
-
Shakespeare's magical music box: the sound of rapture at the GlobeExquisite harmonies, by candlelight, transported audiences in 1600s London out of filthy streets into a gilded world of kings and star-cross’d lovers. Composer-director Claire van Kampen explains why music was a key factor in the Bard’s success
-
David Lang: anthems for doomed youthFrom writing the ultimate tearjerker for Paolo Sorrentino to commemorating the bloodiest day in British military history, David Lang takes it all in his stride. He tells Kate Molleson about the power of repetition and his mechanised co-writer
-
Philip Glass on David Bowie: 'He was a master unto himself'In a spectacular tribute to David Bowie, the US composer’s Heroes symphony is being performed at midnight on Saturday at Glastonbury’s Park stage. Ahead of the set, he discusses his longstanding friendship with the late musician
guides
-
Tom Service's survey of the 50 symphonies that changed musical historyTom Service's survey of the 50 symphonies that changed classical music
-
A guide to contemporary classical musicTom Service introduces 50 composers from the contemporary classical music scene
-
Facing the music Joseph Calleja