Slipped Disc

Aaron Copland – Fanfare for the Common Man Born on this day in 1900, Aaron Copland  was 90 when he died in 1990. Often referred to as the “Dean of American Composers”, he wrote in a […]

The Pacific Symphony has chosen Alexander Shelley to succeed Carl St Clair as music director, starting in the 2026-27 season. St Clair has led the orchestra for 35 years. Shelley, 45, is presently music director […]

The Metropolitan Opera has appointed Daniele Rustioni as its principal guest conductor to cover for Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s ever more extensive commitments elsewhere. Rustioni’s three-year engagement starts next season. He made his Met debut seven years […]

Barrie Gavin died yesterday. One of the most energetic young producers on David Attenborough’s BBC2 channel, Gavin formed a creative relationship with Pierre Boulez and later with Karlheinz Stockhausen, gaining access to the cutting edge […]

The AfD’s foreign affairs group in the German Bundestag has voted to dismmiss Matthias Moosdorf as the party’s spokesman after he accepted an honorary professorship in Moscow. Moosdorf, former cellist of the Leipzig String Quartet, […]

First reports from British tenor Freddie de Tommaso’s Metropolitan Opera debut last night speak of standing Os and whoops of approval. Lise Davidsen, who was singing her first Met Tosca, was applauded before she even […]

When the Berlin Philharmonic visit Frankfurt, they drop into the bank. After yesterday’s limelight concert at the Alte Oper, en route to a US tour, the orchestra renewed its deals with Deutsche Bank as lead […]

Manon – Royal Ballet Click here for tickets Kenneth Macmillan’s fabulous Manon isn’t in the Royal Ballet’s performance programme for this season so I thought we should remind ourselves of what a towering achievement it […]

When Ontario’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony went bust in September 2023, that seemed to be it. Orchestras are not great believers in self-resurrection. But this one is. When the players of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony were told in […]

The Russian-born conductor of the Czech Philharmonic tells David Krauss in Speaking Soundly that he learned to manage pre-concert tension by playing volleyball from age 10 to 18 with Dynamo Leningrad. ‘My piano teacher was […]