Classical music
Why is the organ such hard work?
My old Oxford college, Mansfield, isn’t a famous establishment, though its current principal, ‘Baroness Helena Kennedy’, as she incorrectly styles…
If we really cared about mental health, muzak would be a top priority
No one is consulted. No one is held to account. No one has the authority to turn it off. How…
Was Barenboim happy hiding inside a provincial orchestra from Venezuela?
Daniel Barenboim back at the Festival Hall! Cue The Grand March of the Musical Luvvies Across Hungerford Bridge, a bustling…
Spare us this unanimous chorus of praise for Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, who died last week at the age of 90, would have been the last person, one hopes, to…
Powerful and upsetting: Pelléas et Mélisande at the Barbican reviewed
There are some operas, as there are some people, that it is impossible to establish a settled relationship with, and…
Can this year’s Gesualdo celebrations be about the music rather than the blood and gore?
The allure of Carlo Gesualdo, eighth Count of Conza and third Prince of Venosa, has been felt by music-lovers from…
Musical maestros and football managers have more in common than you think
You don’t have to be a follower of Liverpool Football Club, or football at all, to spot the difference. Two…
Has there ever been a better time to be a lover of Baroque opera?
Time was when early music was a 6 p.m. concert, Baroque began with Bach and ended with Corelli’s Christmas Concerto,…
Late Brahms is wonderfully crafted - which is why it's so dull
Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet begins, writes his biographer Jan Swafford, with ‘a gentle, dying-away roulade that raises a veil of autumnal…
I want to put on a concert in Antarctica. Who will help me?
In this exciting new era of Spectator cruises I have been put in mind of a dream event long in…
My Schubert cruise was a transport of delight
Michael Henderson is transported to raptures on a Schubert cruise
There's a good reason why there are no great female composers
Last week a 17-year-old girl forced the Edexcel exam board to change its A-level music syllabus to include the work…
Orchestral conductors would be much better if they tried performing Renaissance music
To be honest, my friendship with Michael Tilson Thomas hasn’t gone quite as I had hoped. It started in February…
The Magic Flute has never made more cartoonish sense - an Edinburgh Festival roundup
London may cry foul over Hamlet’s misplaced to-be-ing and not-to-be-ing but Edinburgh is in raptures over a Magic Flute which…
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…
Tony Hall’s diary: the Proms, my walking obsession, and why the BBC is like James Bond
There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music…
Why plotting a sound map of London is impossible
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
New works at the Proms that some would rather dernière than première
This year the Proms are to stage 21 world premières and 11 European, UK or London premières. It is good…
The question my mother made me ask André Rieu
André Rieu is a demigod among classical performing artists – and my mother loves him
Is this the greatest piano work of the 21st century?
The award of a knighthood to the composer James MacMillan will have ruined last weekend for lots of unsavoury people:…
I fear for this year’s Proms
As Sepp Blatter has so affectingly remarked, the organisation he formerly headed needs evolution, not revolution. There is a consensus…
When Peter Phillips met E.L. James
Tours that start in Mexico have a nasty habit of repeating on one. Of all the British groups touring in…
The Heckler: why does John Eliot Gardiner have to be so rude?
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is talented almost beyond measure. His Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and stupidly named Orchestre Révolutionnaire…
Classical music doesn't need to change. It just needs more performers like Barbara Hannigan
What classical music really needs is more performers like Barbara Hannigan. Philip Clark meets theself-conducting soprano
‘Ratings aren’t a pressure for me,’ says the new controller of Radio Three
The new controller of Radio Three, Alan Davey, was on Feedback this week (Radio Four) talking to listeners about his…
