London Sinfonietta
Schoenberg owes his survival to crime drama
George Gershwin once made a home movie of Arnold Schoenberg grinning in a suit on his tennis court in Beverly…
Apocalypse chic: Autechre, Last Days and Southbank's Xenakis day reviewed
It was so dark, my friend noted, you could have had sex or done a Hitler salute. No stage lights,…
Claude Vivier ought to be a modern classic. Why isn't he?
April is the cruellest month, but May is shaping up quite pleasantly and the daylight streamed in through the east…
Modernism's back, baby: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival reviewed
It’s not everyone’s idea of fun, a trip to Huddersfield in the depths of November. But as any veteran of…
Hearing Gilbert & Sullivan on period instruments was a revelation
‘I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all,’ wrote Stravinsky in one…
Closing the Queen Elizabeth Hall invigorated the new music scene. Why reopen it?
Imagine the National inviting RuPaul to play Hamlet. Or Tate giving Beryl Cook a retrospective. The London Sinfonietta offered a…
In a world full of zombie new operas, thank god for Philip Glass’s Akhnaten
A mixed year so far for new opera. A few really dismal things have appeared from people who should know…
