Berlin Philharmonic
A lively showcase for a great central European orchestra at the Proms
As the Proms season enters the home straight, it’s moved up a gear, with a string of high profile European…
I'm still not wholly convinced by Kirill Petrenko: Berlin Phil's Digital Concert Hall reviewed
At the start of Elgar’s Second Symphony the full orchestra hovers, poised. It pulls back; and then, like a dam…
The gentle side of Bruckner
The lady behind me on Kensington Gore clearly felt that she owed her friend an apology: ‘It’s Bruckner. I don’t…
Garsington makes as good a case as you can for Strauss’s frothy Capriccio
‘Is there an end [to this opera] that is not trivial?’ asks the Countess in her final bars of Richard…
The old-fashioned greatness of Christian Thielemann
Philip Hensher admires an old-fashioned conductor who unashamedly favours the great German composers — and Wagner in particular
Why are symphony orchestras expected to survive indefinitely?
Watching the Berlin Philharmonic going into conclave to choose a successor to Simon Rattle — after countless hours of secret…
Why Daniel Barenboim should be the next head of the Berlin Phil
Daniel Barenboim is back in town: the South Bank is mounting a ‘Barenboim Project 2015’ in which he’s playing the…
Classical music's greatest political butt-kissers: Dudamel, Gergiev and Rattle
On 8 March 2013, Gustavo Dudamel stood by the coffin of the Marxist autocrat Hugo Chavez and conducted the Simon…
How Claudio Abbado bridged old and new
Not long ago the great conductors of classical music were general practitioners. They expected to give satisfactory interpretations of music…
Goodbye, Claudio Abbado. You helped us glimpse eternity
Fellini’s credo ‘the visionary is the only true realist’ could also be applied to the life of Claudio Abbado, who…
Lang Lang: You can't compare Bach and Schoenberg, or Justin Timberlake and The Beatles
Matthew Stadlen talks to the Chinese pianist Lang Lang
