Category: Features
Nick van Bloss – and how he harnessed his Tourette’s syndrome
In 2011 I published the profile below of the pianist Nick van Bloss in ‘The Independent on Sunday’, at a time when he was taking tentative steps towards a renewed concert and recording ca... Read MoreBrahms at Verbier: notes for a Deutsche Grammophon CD
Fresh from his exertions with his Requiem, Brahms nonchalantly dismissed his first set of Liebeslieder-Waltzer in a letter to his publisher as ‘trifles’, though he was also pretty confident of the... Read MoreYouth orchestras in the Middle East, 2016
Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO), created in 1999, is by no means the only youth orchestra to have emerged from the cauldron of the Middle East. Four years later in Ramallah, t... Read MoreStephen Hough, 2016
Trailing acclaimed recordings, and laden with awards including a $500,000 MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, 54-year-old Stephen Hough is the undisputed top dog among British concert pianists. He is even m... Read MoreThe music of Thomas Larcher, 2016
A quicksilver art If the music of Thomas Larcher reflects conflicting impulses at a very deep level, it also reflects the triumphant resolution of those conflicts. He’s a virtuoso concert pianist ... Read MoreErmonela Jaho, 2016
When dictators stifle dissent, the art which survives is music, and it’s no surprise that the soprano recently taking London’s Royal Opera House by storm should have been born and bred in Enver Ho... Read MoreRoyal Philharmonic Society award for The Other Classical Musics
On the 10th of May 2016, the Royal Philharmonic Society presented its annual gongs, and I am delighted to report that The Other Classical Musics won the Creative Communication award. An extract fr... Read MoreThe Barbican’s new Centre for Music – the case against
(The first in an irregular series of musical blogs.) From now on, every time Simon Rattle raises his baton at the Barbican he will offer a hostage to fortune: the more musically successful the concert... Read More- 4 of 4
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