classical music

The composer’s great biographer, who died this year, gave a wonderfully colourful interview some years back to the Elgar Society. It’s Jerry at his most discursive, remembering the most minute details of his quest. I […]

The death has been made known of Lea Foli, concertmaster of the Winnipeg Symphony from 1960 and of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1969 to 1988. He was 91. Lea Foli was also a faculty member […]

The French musicologist and broadcaster Marcel Marnat has died at the age of 91. He was the author of the impressive 1985 Fayard biography of Maurice Ravel, and he was head of France Musique from […]

The results are in for the 2024 Seoul International Piano Competition, sponsored by LG. All six prize winners are Korean. We checked the results of the last competition, in 2020. Guess what? All six prizewinners […]

Known as the man who ‘gave saxophone a voice in China’, Liu Yuan died of cancer yesterday aged 64. Among other achievements, he founded China’s first rock band and mentored dozens of young talents. The […]

We reported in March that jazz composer Martin Speake was suspended from his teaching posts after students boycotted his classes at TrinityLaban (TL), Guildhall and the Royal Academy of Music. The triogger was a private […]

In the thick of this week’s pre-Christmas strikes, it has become known that Martin Ajdari, directeur général adjoint, is getting out next month. Ajdari, 56, has worked at the Opéra for 24 years. He has […]

Vladimir Putin has issued a decree granting Russian citizenship to the veteran Italian stage director Giancarlo del Monaco. Son of the famed tenor Mario del Monaco. Giancarlo directed Rigoletto at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow […]

The tragic nuns of the gay composer’s opera Dialogues des Carmelites are on their way to becoming saints. From the Rome bulletin Il messagero: The sixteen Carmelite nuns of Compiègne, who during the Reign of […]