Classical Music Reviews
I Can Play with Brass Roots: Shepherd Brass Band and National Centre for Early Music win award for project enabling D/deaf young musicians to develop their musical talent
L to R: Charlie Coulson (Shepherd Brass Band), Audrey Brown, (Shepherd Brass Band)Cherry Fricker, (Executive Director, National Centre for Early Music) I Can Play with Brass Roots gained the National Award for Band Project of […]
Meet the class of 2025: National Youth Orchestra’s Illuminate tour with Ravel, Nielsen and Anna Thorvaldsdottir
National Youth Orchestra The National Youth Orchestra (NYO) opens 2025 with its Illuminate tour, when Jaime Martin will conduct the teenage musicians in Ravel’s Bolero, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Catamorphosis and Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 ‘Inextinguishable’, with concerts at […]
Royal Throne of Kings: Vaughan Williams’ forgotten incidental music for Shakespeare in Stratford receives a new lease of life
Vaughan Williams had a great fondness for Shakespeare and settings of Shakespeare’s texts thread their way through the composer’s life, from the songs The Willow Song (1897), and Orpheus With His Lute (1903), to the larger scale Serenade to […]
An engaging evening of fun demonstrating the very real virtues of Gilbert & Sullivan at its best: Ruddigore at Opera North
Gilbert & Sullivan: Ruddigore – Dominic Sedgwick – Opera North, 2024 (Photo: © Richard H Smith) Gilbert & Sullivan: Ruddigore: Amy Freston, Claire Pascoe, Dominic Sedgwick, Henry Waddington, Xavier Hetherington, Helen Evora, John Savournin, Steven […]
Classical Music News
A diversity warrior says classical music has not changed
A new front has been opened in the diversity wars by Kristina Kolbe, assistant professor in Sociology of Arts and Culture at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a visiting fellow at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute. In […]
Why new music is in trouble
We’ve just seen a report from Donaueschingen, the world’s oldest new music festival (if that’s not a contradiction in terms), dating back to 1921. The festival has been fading for decades. This year’s title was […]
Baltimore eliminates arts coverage
The Baltimore Sun today scrapped its features department, reassigning its remaining writers to the news department. This leaves the 30th-ranked US city without any reporting on its busy music scene, museums, galleries and performing arts […]
Donald Trump steals Andre Rieu clip in latest video
Three seconds in, a Trump campaign video (here) uses a flash shot of the Dutch violinist and a teenaged singer in its opening sequence. The clip, taken without permission, has been circulated by Twitter owner […]