Tallis Scholars
Josquin changed musical history – why don't we hear more of him?
Stepping into the Sistine Chapel, the choir loft is probably the last thing you’d notice. ‘Loft’ is, frankly, a stretch…
Peter Phillips bids farewell to his music column after 33 years
This, my 479th, is to be my last contribution as a regular columnist to The Spectator. I have written here…
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…
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…
There’s nothing wrong with getting into Thomas Tallis on the back of Fifty Shades of Grey
Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the…
Spotify: saint or sinner?
We have all read about the current woeful state of the CD industry — how it is 28 per cent…
Peter Phillips is mugged by a gang of Praetorius-loving six-year-old girls in China
We have read about the remarkable opening up of China in recent years: how many people live there and how…
Christopher Hogwood: the absolutist of early music
The death of Christopher Hogwood has deprived the world of the most successful exponent of early music there has ever…
Was Elgar’s The Kingdom an attempt to write a religious Ring Cycle?
To go from the second day of the England v. India Test match at Lord’s to the Albert Hall for…
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…
