Classical Music Reviews

Preview: Edinburgh Festival 2025
Following on from our coverage of the Britten Pears 2025/26 season yesterday, here are details of this year’s Edinburgh Festival: The Edinburgh International Festival opens on 1 August and features 1700 artists from 42 countries […]

Britten Pears Arts announces its 2026/26 Season
Highlights include: Britten Weekend marks 80 years since the end of the Second World War and the liberation of Auschwitz Aurora Orchestra performs Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony from memory and is joined by Chloë Hanslip for Prokofiev’s […]

A family affair: beginning as a memorial to his father, Andrew Arceci’s Winchendon Music Festival has grown into a community enterprise
The Murdock-Whitney House, Winchendon History & Cultural Centre Andrew Arceci is an American viola da gamba, violone, and bass player who studied at the Peabody Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and at Oxford. His UK performances […]

Ian Bostridge and Saskia Giorgini in Schubert
This is the latest of Classical Explorer‘s Miller’s daughters: Andrè Schun was a single release; Christoph Prégardien’s (part of a set of the great cycles); there is even a “pub edition” on Rubicon!. Ian Bostridge […]
Classical Music News

A Palestine flag is waved on Covent Garden stage
It appears that a member of the cast of Il Trovatore made a pro-Palestine protest during curtain calls for Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House last night. Staff attempts to remove the flag […]

La Scala’s rejected chief opens Bayreuth Festival
The first conductor at the 2025 festival this week will be Daniele Gatti, rejected as chief conductor at La Scala Milan in favour of Myung Whun Chung. He conducts a new production by Matthias Davids […]

Edgy modern music that is massively good fun
From the Lebrecht Album of the Week: … It’s 1920 where the fun begins. Behind Haba’s cerebral exterior lurks mischief. The fourth of six pieces for piano is a setting of the nursery rhyme ‘1-2-3-4-5, […]

Dear Alma, They are squeezing the life out of my opera company
From our agony aunt: Dear Alma, I have been conducting a wonderful medium-sized opera company in a solid, comfortable city for over twenty years. As you are most likely aware, opera has been suffering lately, […]