classical music

An advisory about interval bells has been issued in the website’s disability section: ‘The bell is loud and can be startling. It is rung ten minutes before the show starts and at each interval.’  So […]

The Italian ballerina Alessandra Ferri starts work today as director of the Vienna State Ballet, taking responsibility for ballet to both the Staatsoper and Volksoper, and at the Ballet Academy. Ferri, 62, has starred as […]

News from the Grafenegg Festival: Zubin Mehta has had to cancel his appearance at the Grafenegg Festival on September 7. Daniel Barenboim will conduct the concert with Rudolf Buchbinder and the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower […]

The 15th Banff International String Quartet Competition  was decided overnight in Canada. The winners come from Cinicinnati and are known as the Poiesis Quartet. A peculiar press rerlease goes on to designate their preferred modes […]

The Mexican soprano Lourdes Ambriz, the voice of Belle in Disney’s 1990 Spanish-language version of Beauty and the Beast, has died at 67. After a diverse international opera career, Lourdes served from 2015 to 2017 […]

Message received:   The Dutch lutenist and theorbo player Fred Jacobs died last Thursday. As fine a player of those instruments as there could be, whether as a soloist or as a continuo player, he […]

Good result from a fairly uneventful summer fest: The Salzburg Festival Directorate – Kristina Hammer, Markus Hinterhäuser and Lukas Crepaz – is pleased to announce a 98.4% percentage of occupied seats. 256.600 guests from 88 […]

The death has been communicated of Klaus Thunemann, principal bassoon in Hamburg in the 1960s and 70s, an international soloist and a lasting influence on the next two generations of performers. Klaus was 88. The […]

From Bruce Duffie’s 1990 interview in Chicago with the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who died this week: RS: I must tell you little story. I know Shostakovich personally, himself, because my father a few years […]