Classical music
Hear the greatest Parsifal of our time sing like a Muppet: Jonas Kaufmann’s Christmas album reviewed
In classical music circles, Christmas arrives with the overture to Handel’s Messiah. Or so they’ll tell you. In truth, festivities…
Refined and dreamy: CBSO centenary concerts reviewed
For an orchestra to lose one anniversary concert may be regarded as unfortunate. To lose two? Welcome to 2020. The…
How we became a nation of choirs and carollers
Alexandra Coghlan on how we became a nation of choirs and carollers
The grotesque unevenness of Mozart’s Requiem
It is amazing what fine performances you can get beamed to your computer these days. Slightly less amazing is the…
Unobtrusively filmed, powerfully performed but still unsatisfying: LSO's Bluebeard reviewed
The timing couldn’t be better. Just as the gates clang shut on another national lockdown, trapping us all indefinitely with…
A silly, bouncy delight: Glyndebourne's In the Market for Love reviewed
Offenbach at Glyndebourne! Short of Die Soldaten with a picnic break or a period-instrument revival of Jerry Springer: The Opera,…
Why did Balakirev's beautiful, inventive works go out of fashion?
Anyone who invited the Russian composer Mily Balakirev to dinner had to be jolly careful about the fish they served.…
I don’t know when I’ve been more moved: Ora Singers at Tate Modern reviewed
It’s the breath I miss most. The moment when a shuffling group of men and women in scruffy concert blacks…
The forgotten female composer fêted by Mozart and Haydn
Selina Mills on Maria Theresia von Paradis, the gifted but forgotten 18th-century composer, whose story will finally be told in a new chamber opera
Why orchestras are sounding better than ever under social-distancing
Our college choirmaster had a trick that he liked to deploy when he sensed that we were phoning it in.…
The death of the Southbank Centre
The roots of the Southbank Centre’s current crisis stretch back to before the pandemic, says Oliver Basciano
Couldn't the BBC have filled at least some of the seats? First night of the Proms reviewed
The Royal Albert Hall, as Douglas Adams never wrote, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely,…
Enter the parallel universe that is the Lucerne Festival
There wasn’t going to be a Lucerne Festival this year. The annual month-long squillion-dollar international beano got cancelled, along with…
The original Edinburgh Festival
James Sadler’s 1815 balloon flight, a Fringe first, heralded the greatest musical extravaganza that Scotland had ever seen, says John D. Halliday
The joy of going to a real concert: OHP's Heart of Delight reviewed
I went to a concert! Not a livestream or download: a real concert, with real musicians, a real conductor, a…
‘Where I grew up, classical music was diversity’: an interview with conductor Alpesh Chauhan
Richard Bratby talks to Birmingham Opera Company’s new music director Alpesh Chauhan about his Brummie roots, Bruckner and how his BAME heritage is a non-story
Beethoven 32 piano sonatas were his musical laboratory – here are the best recordings
If you want to understand Beethoven, listen to his piano sonatas. Without them, you’ll never grasp how the same man…
Portrait of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic – Britain's oldest and ballsiest orchestra
Richard Bratby on Britain’s oldest and ballsiest orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which has taken on everyone from gang leaders to Derek Hatton
After weeks of silence, Royal Opera reopened with a whimper
It was the fourth time, or maybe the fifth, that I found myself reaching for the tissues that I began…
The musical event of the year: Wigmore Hall BBC Radio 3 Special Broadcasts reviewed
Remember when 2020 was going to be Beethoven year? There were going to be cycles and festivals, recordings and reappraisals;…
Another drama about how women are great and men are rubbish: C4's Philharmonia reviewed
On the face of it, a French-language drama about a Parisian symphony orchestra mightn’t sound like the most action-packed of…
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…
Swanky, stale and sullen, the summer music festival has had its day
The summer music festival has had its day, says Norman Lebrecht
Drunk singers, Ravel on film and prime Viennese operetta: the addictive joys of classical YouTube
The full addictive potential of classical YouTube needs to be experienced to be understood. And let’s be honest, there are…
The best recordings of the greatest symphony
I am daunted. Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony is a work that I regard with love, awe and even anxiety. I always…
