Vaughan Williams
A miniature rite of a very English spring: a Vaughan Williams rediscovery in Liverpool
Imagine a folk dance without music. Actually, you don’t have to: poke about on YouTube and you’ll find footage from…
The joy of Franck’s Symphony in D Minor: BBCSO/Gabel, at the Proms, reviewed
In the Rodgers and Hart musical On Your Toes, a Broadway hoofer is forced to work at a community college,…
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…
Art tackles social distancing and, for once, actually wins: Philharmonia Sessions reviewed
First there were the home recitals: musicians playing solo Bach in front of their bookshelves, wonkily captured on iPhones. Next…
The sinister strains of English folk music
With public life increasingly a din of personalised ringtones and phone chatter, we crave silence. Acoustic ecologists speak of ‘ear…
The greatest British opera after Dido and Grimes? Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea
In a remote fishing village a lone figure confronts an unexplained death, standing tormented but unbroken against fate, the community…
A Horrible History of English Hymns
Given that for much of English history the country’s main musical tradition was that connected with the church, it is…
German refugees transformed British cultural life - but at a price
German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook
McVicar’s Figaro looks increasingly fossilised. Time for the Royal Opera to ditch it
Is there a more extraordinary, more heart-stilling moment in all opera than the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro?…
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?
