classical music

The one on the right is Sam Smith ‘the first openly non-binary musician to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and to win a Grammy Award’. He is not, by any definition, a […]

From the Hungarian-British conductor Gergeley Madaras: Besides my own performance with the exceptional NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo I was asked to stay for a total of 3 weeks in Japan, to stand by for the […]

La Fille mal gardée – Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler’s Wells Review by Alastair Macaulay Frederick Ashton’s full-length ballet “La Fille mal gardée” (1960) is a comic study of rural innocence that runs far deeper […]

In 1991 I spent time with the rock-star Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who has died aged 84. Phil had conceived a passion verging on obsession with recent, mostly British, symphonists of considerable obscurity. Havergal […]

Thursday’s Berlin Philharmonic concert, conducted by Daniel Barenboim with Marthat Argerich playing Beethoven’s second piano concerto, has been described in local media as ‘the gift of the season’. Barenboim, visibly frail, conducted from a chair […]

We’re hearing that talks with Philadelphia’s Matias Tarnopolski have stalled. The new favourite to lead the New York Philharmonic is Marie-Hélène Bernard of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Some expect an announcement in the next […]

The flamboyant Georgian-French pianist Khatia Buniatishvili is taking up directing concertos from the keyboard. She plays London’s Barbican in December. ‘My control is that I lose control,’ she tells an AP videographer. ‘I just give […]

Canada’s international organ competition has been won by a Swede, Johannes Skoog. He flies home with C$25,000, a record release on ATMA Classique and a three-year agencty deal with Karen McFarlane Artists. Second was Henry […]

We hear that the orchestra of English National Opera has been engaged to play Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa at Grange Park Opera next summer. It will be conducted by ENO’s former music director, Martyn Brabbins, who resigned […]