Mendelssohn
Not pleasant, and not in tune, but unarguably compelling: Royal Opera's Nabucco reviewed
Nabucco, said Giuseppe Verdi, ‘was born under a lucky star’. It was both his last throw of the dice and…
Bigamists, lunatics and adventurers: the raucous world of 19th century British music
The world of 19th-century British music was raucous, but are there any masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered? wonders Richard Bratby
Mistaken identity
This year’s Lucerne Festival is given its identity by having as its theme ‘Identity’. Since the word doesn’t mean anything,…
Now that's what I call sex: Birmingham Royal Ballet's Ashton Double Bill reviewed
That joke about the young bull who tells the old bull, ‘Hey, Dad, see all those cows — let’s run…
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…
Don’t listen to Amadeus - this Salieri opera is better than Mozart
Magical transformations are a commonplace of opera. We see our heroes turned into animals, trees, statues; witness wild beasts turned…
Why we love hating the music we hate as much as we love loving the music we love
It’s all gone now, of course. Not just the magazines themselves, but the legendary bile of old-school rock criticism
Wedding music lives or dies at the hands of the organist
A few weeks ago I was at the perfect wedding. My young friend Will Heaven, a comment editor at the…
