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 More
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 More
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 More
Sardonically christened ‘Lisztomania’ by the German poet Heinrich Heine, an infectious disease swept through musical Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. Women were its main victims, with fetishi...Read More
Barbican: Murray Perahia Jun 20 Royal Festival Hall: Richard Goode May 25 Wigmore Hall: Till Fellner May 30; Yevgeny Sudbin June 16; St James’s Church, Piccadilly: June 17 Murray Perahia is o...Read More
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 More
A youth opera about adolescent alienation? We’ve watched too many of them founder in their own plodding worthiness, and the heart sank at the prospect of yet another, particularly one travelling und...Read More
Given its accessibility and musical magnificence, it seems extraordinary that Enescu’s Oedipe – premiered in Paris in 1936 – should have had to wait until now for its British premiere. But...Read More
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 More
(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