Mozart, Britten, Knussen and Françaix: A Tribute to Janet CD review – deft...
Britten Oboe Quartet/Daniel(Harmonia Mundi)Formed by members of the Britten Sinfonia, the Britten Oboe Quartet makes its debut on disc with a collection dedicated to the memory of Janet Craxton, who...
View ArticleKokoschka’s Doll and Lucio Silla: this week’s best UK classical concerts
John Casken’s melodrama promises to be the pick of new works at Cheltenham music festival, while Mozart’s opera seria gets a rare British performanceThe pick of the new works at this year’s Cheltenham...
View ArticleMozart and Beethoven: Violin Sonatas CD review – Ji Young Lim makes an...
Lim/Lim (Warner)With violin playing so crisp you could dip it in sour cream and onion and hand it round at a party, this is an assured debut from Ji Young Lim. And yet even as the notes spring from her...
View ArticleThree Choirs and Malcolm Sargent: this week’s best UK classical concerts
The choral extravaganza comes to Worcester, while the BBC celebrates the late Proms conductor on the 50th anniversary of his deathIt’s Worcester’s turn to host the choral extravaganza and while there...
View ArticleThe Guardian view on opera: still powerful, still relevant | Editorial
Opera, an artform that exemplifies Europe’s cultural interconnectedness, should not be written off as simply elitistThe V&A’s new exhibition, the first to be shown in its elegant, recently...
View ArticleCan a 10-year-old be a genius? What Hemingway’s first short story tells us
A newly discovered piece of fiction by the US author joins humbling examples of juvenilia by other great artists, from Jane Austen to Pablo Picasso“We are going on a trip to Europe,” begins what could...
View ArticleCosì fan tutte review – Nicholas Hytner's irresistible production takes a bow
Glyndebourne, LewesHytner’s sunny, unironic staging of Mozart’s problematic comedy – about to tour for a final time – is one of the most intelligent and insightful aroundGlyndebourne has always...
View ArticleLady Gaga, Rigoletto, Ode to Joy and Eliza's Aria? Earworms, all of them
Mark Twain wrote about it in 1876 and he didn’t even have a radio … some music gets stuck in our heads. Mind you, classical composers intended it that wayLa, la, la, la, la, la-la laaaa ... Can’t get...
View ArticleWear what you want to The Marriage of Figaro | Brief letters
Elitism and opera | Neutron stars | Greek theatre acoustics | Jeremiah and the King James Bible | Three-legged stoolsHoward Jacobson (There is no excuse for a man not to wear a suit…’, Weekend, 14...
View ArticleAnd God created Mozart – archive, 1991
5 December 1991 The Enlightenment did more than help create Mozart the boy wonder, it gave us the idea of the artist as demi-God that persists 200 years after his death, Nicholas Till arguesThis...
View ArticleThe Marriage of Figaro review – beguiling cast bring clarity to the confusion
Hackney Empire, LondonEnglish Touring Opera’s production is beautifully sung and manages to bring out the tenderness within the comedyThe centrepiece of English Touring Opera’s spring season is a new...
View ArticleThe Magic Flute review – Ingmar Bergman does Mozart with dreamlike strangeness
As this rereleased 1975 version shows, the opera was the perfect vehicle for Bergman’s combination of symbolism, seriousness and mischiefIngmar Bergman’s 1975 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute,...
View ArticleSigned off school with Beatlemania | Brief letters
GKN | National debt | Beatlemania | Hamlet relief | Returning the empties | OffenbachIf the government fails to intervene to prevent the acquisition of GKN by Melrose it will be further proof, if any...
View ArticleMarriage of Figaro review – Ireland's new opera company opens with unfussy...
Gaiety theatre, DublinIrish National Opera’s first bespoke show needed more emotional depth and complexity, but musical standards were high, with Máire Flavin’s Countess and Aoife Miskelly’s Cherubino...
View ArticleClassical composers unfairly tainted by STD rumours, book claims
Author looks at 70 composers from Beethoven to Britten, also dismissing alcoholism claimsA retired surgeon’s research into the deaths of 70 of the best-known classical composers has led him to conclude...
View ArticleThe week in classical: Berlin to Broadway; Le nozze di Figaro; BBC Symphony...
Fine tribute is paid to Kurt Weill, rising stars shine at Nevill Holt – and it’s time to start bidding farewell to Maida Vale studiosFestival madness aside, midsummer is the time for national opera...
View ArticleRichard Maunder obituary
My friend Richard Maunder, who has died aged 80, was distinguished in two separate scholarly disciplines: mathematics and musicology.His book, Algebraic Topology, first published in 1970, became a...
View ArticleClassical album of the week: La Clemenza di Tito review – Nézet-Séguin and...
Villazón / Rebeka / DiDonato / Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Nézet-Séguin(Deutsche Grammophon)In 2011, tenor Rolando Villazón instigated a project to record all the mature Mozart operas, complete with...
View Article‘Danny Dyer should definitely be the next James Bond’: Philomena Cunk...
As the famed thinker prepares to publish her first encyclopedia of everything ever, she pontificates on Mozart, Norbit and moreDanny Dyer is probably the greatest actor of his generation. Born Danial...
View ArticleCosì fan tutte review – lovers recoupled in impressive Mozart
Fikret/Mas/Kristoffersen/Sprague/Pizzuti/Vultaggio/RLPO/Pillot RubiconEven the most inspired staging of Così fan tutte leaves a lot of disbelief to be suspended. In Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera, two...
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