classical

From our agony aunt’s mailbag: Dear Alma, My string quartet is not in a good place. The founding violinist is fairly distant with the rest of us, who came in to replace her original partners […]

We have been notified of the death, aged 90, of the distinguished composer Siegfried Thiele, a man who maintained a successful career under both Communism and capitalism. Born in Chemnitz, he initially combined composing for […]

Musicians in the Munich Symphony Orchestra, ranking fourth in the city’s hierarchy, have discovered that they are paid 800 Euros a month less than the lowest paid in the other orchestra. They have published an […]

Berlin’s Konzarthaus has called off its Projections festival in February due to the effects of budget cuts amounting to 1.8 million Euros. The Konzerthaus said: ‘This cancellation makes the far-reaching effects of the current cuts […]

A concert at the Teatro Maggio Musicale to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death was cancelled due to a general strike of public workers across Italy. Politics came first. The post Florence dishonours […]

The musicians picked  their moment to blank the centernary of Puccini’s death. What should have been a recital with orchestra by Jonas Kaufmann and Anna Netrebko was called off at five minutes past eight on […]

La forza del destino is an opera from Verdi’s heyday. Premiered four years after Un ballo in maschera, a very special moment in his production, it coincides with the prevailing taste for the exoticism of other worlds. Only […]

Two very rare videos from our archives. Watch here. Today is the 70th anniversary of his death and no orchestra that he worked with – Berlin, Vienna, Philharmonia – has bothered to commemorate it. Listen […]

The Wilhelm Furtwängler Society has shared with us an English version of Wolfgang Schreiber’s shrewd and timely overview of the conductor’s legacy, 70 years after his death. It’s an essential summary, from an internal-German perspective. […]

From the Lebrecht Album of the Week: The sound of Berlin in the Weimar years is defined by Kurt Weill. More than any other composer, his music for the Bertolt Brecht shows conjured the jittery, […]