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Classical music & opera

  • Aleš Briscein, Lucy Crowe and Peter Hoare perform with the LSO in the Barbican Hall

    Review
    The Excursions of Mr Brouček – Simon Rattle embraces Janáček’s baffling but beautiful opera

  • Natalya Romaniw (Sieglinde), kneeling, with the Valkyries in Die Walkure at the Royal Opera House, London.

    Review
    Die Walküre – Kosky’s formidable staging is full of magic and menace

    The second of the Royal Opera’s new Ring cycle again places Erda, the ancient Earth Mother, at its heart to create a memorable new production full of very fine singing and playing
  • Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cellist. Photographed at the Barbican. London. Photograph by David Levene 21/4/25

    ‘Music is never fixed in me’ … cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason on surviving a ‘volcano of racism’

    A remark about Rule, Britannia! led to uproar but the star musician is concentrating on the joy and power of classical music. As his first book is published, he talks to Charlotte Higgins• Read an exclusive extract from Kanneh-Mason’s new book
  • John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London play Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 2 (featuring Sheku Kanneh-Mason) in a concert also showcasing Rachmaninov’s opus-numbered symphonic debut , opening with the London premiere of Kenneth Hesketh’s reworking of music from his opera The Overcoat in the Barbican Hall on Tuesday 15 Oct. 2024. Photos by Mark Allan

    Sheku Kanneh-Mason: ‘I had to place Black and classical next to each other in a way that made perfect sense’

  • Elim Chan, who will conduct the Last Night of the Proms in 2025.

    News
    BBC announces 2025 Proms lineup – including first female-fronted Last Night

  • Das Rheingold in 2023.

    Opera
    ‘Touching the soul is all that matters!’ The outrageous genius of Barrie Kosky and his Wagner phantasmagoria

  • György Kurtág (left) and Pierre-Laurent Aimard

    Album review
    Kurtág: Játékok – Aimard is perfect guide to major set of piano miniatures

Live reviews

  • David Childs with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff.

    BBCNOW/MacMillan/Childs review – James MacMillan’s nostalgic celebration of the euphonium

  • Grisha Martirosyan and Isabela Díaz in Pimpinone.

    Pimpinone review – hot-to-trot comic opera from the underperformed Telemann

  • The Carducci Quartet at the Barbican.

    Carducci Quartet review – terror and tumult as Shostakovich focus widens

  • The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko perform Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony with a captivating video installation.

    RPO/Petrenko review – a blistering, multi-hued Shostakovich

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Album reviews

  • Crouch End Festival Chorus

    Elgar: The Kingdom review – respectful and admirable, but this is still a work hard to love

  • Imaginative and interesting … Lukas Geniušas and Anna Geniushene.

    Hallelujah Junction album review – two-piano journey through 20th-century Americana

  • Buoyant and affectionate music-making …Nicola Benedetti and Aurora Orchestra.

    Nicola Benedetti: Beethoven’s Violin Concerto album review – warm and deliciously playful throughout

  • Bruckner & Gesualdo: Echoing Across the Centuries, Monteverdi Choir ,
Jonathan Sells (conductor )

    Bruckner & Gesualdo: Motets album review – less might be more for Monteverdi’s Gesualdo

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People

  • Steve Reich

    The reader interview
    Steve Reich: ‘We all wish art could counter the direction of US politics. But it can’t’

  • Luebeck, Germany. 28th Mar, 2014. Russian composer and music lecturer Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina teaches her students during a lecture at the Luebeck Academy of Music in Luebeck, Germany, 28 March 2014. Photo: Olaf Malzahn/dpa/Alamy Live News<br>DY7W0H Luebeck, Germany. 28th Mar, 2014. Russian composer and music lecturer Sofia Asgatovna Gubaidulina teaches her students during a lecture at the Luebeck Academy of Music in Luebeck, Germany, 28 March 2014. Photo: Olaf Malzahn/dpa/Alamy Live News

    Obituary
    Sofia Gubaidulina

  • Simon Rattle looking to camera, holding up a baton in front of his face

    At home with Simon Rattle: ‘There are still things I feel are beyond me’

  • Max Richter, at his studios in his home in Oxfordshire

    Q&A
    Max Richter: ‘I’m a low-key raver! I love all kinds of music’

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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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