Slipped Disc

A regular concertgoer reports:   I usually sit on the side circle At Symphony Hall, but was moved up to the higher level by the CBSO because my usual seats were being used by the […]

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week: Ferdinand Ries and Franz Clement were the musicians closest to Beethoven. Ries, who knew Beethoven from Bonn, acted as his secretary before moving to London where he was […]

Brokeback Mountain – Opera Click here  for tv subscription This is a modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen of Annie Proulx’s short story previously adapted by Ang Lee for the Oscar-winning film. It marks composer […]

Dear Alma, I have been in an orchestra for a short while. It’s an excellent group and I worked hard to achieve this position. The orchestra is not in my home country, and I quite […]

This week’s guest on David Krauss’s Speaking Soundly is the stellar mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who talks about audiences… in front of a live audience. ‘You have to prove yourself every time,’ she says. ‘There is […]

The paper’s cultural reporter learned the hard way that Mistuko Uchida does not play the game any way but hers. A scholarly artist, Uchida was intent on testing my musical knowledge, stopping the interview several […]

Scrutiny of the ROH accounts for the year ending August 27, 2023 shows that the outgoing music director, Sir Antonio Pappano, earned just under £940,000 in 12 months, one-third up on the previous year. Some […]

On of the reasons orchestras organise choral concerts is because amateur singers have families who usually book to hear them. Not in Birmingham, apparently. One of our moles tells us that, with three hours to […]

The Illinois Symphony Orchestra has signed Taichi Fukumura as music director, starting next month. He succeeds Ken Lam. Taichi Fukumura came second in the 2o23 Mahler conducting competition. He has received four Solti Foundation US […]

The high point of the Lucerne Strings performance in Istanbul was a hightailed intervention by a local stray. As soon as the cat saw there was no conductor, it quickened the tempo.   View this […]