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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Classical music & opera

  • Stradella- Mottetti - Concerto Italiano - Daylight session photo - press image

    Album review
    Stradella: Mottetti – flair and style, brilliantly executed

  • Robin Tritschler - press handout image - © Garreth Wong - press handout image 2024

    Album review
    Songs for Peter Pears – wide-ranging and lucid collection

    Irish tenor Robin Tritschler presentation of songs written for Benjamin Britten’s professional and personal partner of nearly 40 years is a fine achievement
  • The cast stand under a tree with huge signs bearing words like Allegria, Fedelta, Comodo, Piacer

    Royal Opera House
    Così fan Tutte review – self-conscious staginess is surreal fun in beautifully sung revival

    The men prance about in fake moustaches while the women roll their eyes in this turbo-charged revival of Jan Philipp Gloger’s riotous take on Mozart’s opera
  • LOW RES: Mishka Rushdie Momen. Performing at the 2023 Trasimeno Music Festival in Perugia, Italy

    Mishka Rushdie Momen
    ‘Dazzling, beautiful and vital’ - the pianist on Tudor keyboard masterpieces

  • A force to be reckoned with … Rosie Aldridge as Baba the Turk and Adam Temple-Smith as Tom Rakewell in The Rake's Progress at the Grange festival, Northington, Alresford.

    The Grange festival
    The Rake’s Progress review – stripped back staging foregrounds the sadness

  • Brian Hanson-Harding

    After years of obsessive learning, my piano sits silent – and I’m happy with that

    Brian Hanson-Harding
  • Bertrand Chamayou

    Album review
    Chamayou: Cage² – each piece is a brightly coloured gem

Live reviews

  • Inspired by the Tower’s many ghosts … Williams and Kenny.

    Nardus Williams/Elizabeth Kenny review – compelling and crystalline duo open Spitalfields festival

  • Ben Goldscheider at the Purcell Room, London.

    Goldscheider/Dawson review – the horn is plenty

  • Sumidagawa by Marcus Roth.

    Sumidagawa/Curlew River review – Britten’s work reunited with its medieval Japanese inspiration

  • Magnetic intensity … Daniel Pioro (centre left) performs with the BBCSO conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth.

    BBCSSO/Wigglesworth/Pioro/Gerhardt review – consummate artistry and a broken string

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Album reviews

  • Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy.

    Kolesnikov/Tsoy: Franz Schubert/Leonid Desyatnikov review – a piano duo of rare intimacy

  • Ausrine Stundyte and John Lundgren in Eine Florentinische Tragödie

    Zemlinsky: Eine Florentinische Tragödie album review – adultery and murder in Renaissance Italy

  • Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion.

    Rectangles and Circumstance album review – collaborative and gleefully eclectic collection

  • Taking his time … Osmo Vänskä.

    Mahler: Symphony No3 album review – grandeur and beauty in Vänskä’s sober approach

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People

  • Roger Wright, CEO of Britten Pears Arts

    ‘I’ve always been a glass half full person’
    Aldeburgh festival’s outgoing CEO Roger Wright

  • Jerrold Northrop Moore began his Elgar researches as a student by interviewing people who had known the composer.

    Obituary
    Jerrold Northrop Moore

  • Actor and writer Paterson Joseph

    ‘I was told I was stupid’
    Peep Show’s Paterson Joseph on his debut novel – and writing three operas

  • Press shot of Jonny Greenwood, he has his fingers in his ears. Behind him are large pink/purple flowers on a bush.

    ‘I’m still arsing around on instruments like when I was a kid’
    Jonny Greenwood

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You may have missed

  • ‘Our first time’ … Gemma New will conduct the world premiere of City of Floating Sounds.

    In the key of 5G
    The ‘dimensionalist’ who wrote a symphony for 1,000 phones

  • Beatrice Harrison, cellist, with microphone

    The spy, the songbird and the sham that wasn’t
    How I restored broadcasting history

  • Tradition … the band of the Durham Miners Association.

    I’ve got the Hovis ad in one ear and the Battle of Orgreave in the other
    My obsession with brass bands

  • Members of the Russian radical feminist group 'Pussy Riot' stage a protest performance in Red Square in Moscow<br>Members of the Russian radical feminist group 'Pussy Riot' sing a song at the so-called Lobnoye Mesto (Forehead Place), long before used for announcing Russian tsars' decrees and occasionally for carrying out public executions, in Red Square in Moscow January 20, 2012. Eight activists, who were later detained by police, staged a performance to protest against the policies conducted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov (RUSSIA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST SOCIETY)

    Conor Mitchell:
    ‘Russian protest punk and symphonies might seem worlds apart. But the idea is the same: weaponise your art’

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Guides

  • 1216 Portrait of Ethel Smyth<br>PBBHMT 1216 Portrait of Ethel Smyth

    Know the score
    Without Ethel Smyth and classical music's forgotten women, we only tell half the story

    Leah Broad
  • From left: The Tempest, The Minotaur, L’amour de loin, Hamlet

    The best classical music works of the 21st century

  • A guide to contemporary classical music

  • Fireworks light the sky above the Brandenburg Gate shortly after midnight in Berlin, Friday, Jan. 1, 2016. Hundred of thousands of people gathered for the New Year celebrations, welcoming the new year 2016 at the area around the Brandenburg Gate in the capital of Germany. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

    A musical tour of Europe
    Stephen Moss's guide to the music of Europe's great cities: Berlin

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