Richard Strauss: Elektra – Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2015 (Photo: Bettina Stöß) Richard Strauss: Elektra, Intermezzo; Doris Soffel, Elena Pankratova, Camilla Nylund, Philipp Jekal, Maria Bengtsson, Deutsche Oper Berlin, conductors: Thomas Søndergard, Donald Runnicles, directors: Tobias Kratzer, Kirsten HarmsReviewed […]
Virginia Woolf 84 years ago this week on 28th March, Virginia Woolf aged 59 took her own life by walking into the River Ouse with stones in her pockets because, having suffered from recurring bouts […]
How far may a person go to free themselves from dire circumstances? Here, a woman becomes a vile murderer, and yet the 26-year-old composer Shostakovich sympathises with her. Of his own radically complex leading character, […]
The North Carolina Symphony is mourning Erik Dyke who played double bass in the orchestra for almost 50 years. He was well known around Raleigh for cycling through town with a 20-pound double bass strapped […]
Washington National Opera and the National Symphony just announced next season’s plans under new management. WNO is putting on Robert Ward’s opera of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, a reconfoguration of the 1650s Salem witch-hunt as […]
Unwanted musical instruments present a recycling challenge. Musical instruments are typically made of high value materials such as rare woods and metals, that are complicated to manufacture and contain intricate parts made from a range […]
The London Philharmonic last night played works by Saariaho, Prokofiev and Nielsen at the Royal Festival Hall. The conductor was the underrated Finn Hannu Lintu and the soloist was Alina Ibragimova. If any European orchestra […]
The singer-songwriter posted this reminiscence four years ago: Fun fact, the titular line for “You Can Call Me Al” was inspired by an amusing misunderstanding at a party. One evening in the early 1970s, French […]
Friends have reported the death of Nicholas Kynaston, the universally admired English organist, at the age of 83. Jeremy Filsell, outgoing director of music at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, writes: RIP Nicolas […]
Conway Hall Conway Hall’s Sunday Concerts, a concert series established in 1887 and still going strong, remains something of a hidden gem dating from 1929. Weekly classical chamber music at affordable prices in a remarkable […]
