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Classical music & opera

  • ‘Festivals have to be slightly different and magical’
    Orkney’s St Magnus festival

  • Review
    Les Siècles – Raw, radical and revelatory as Roth’s period band thrills

    François-Xavier Roth led an exhilarating and illuminating programme that moved through 80 years of French music, from Berlioz to Boulanger

  • ‘I’ve never been so productive’
    The composer who wrote a concerto during 12 lots of chemo

    Adrian Sutton, the Olivier-winning composer who has incurable cancer, is in an extraordinary race against time – to mount a celebratory concert of his work. He details his battles over the past six months

  • Review
    BBC Cardiff Singer of the World – a surprise winner and unexpected vocal delights

  • Review
    LSO/Rattle – wistful and life-enhancing, a terrific farewell for the departing chief

  • I went home with two crystal trophies and a sonic screwdriver kit
    Jamie Barton on Cardiff Singer of the World

  • Lubaina Himid
    ‘I love opera because it’s the way I experience life’

Live reviews

  • Werther review – Kaufmann heads strong cast in stylishly sung and fabulously played revival

    • Ariadne auf Naxos review – austere staging makes room for the riches of Strauss

    • The week in classical: Dialogues des Carmélites; Tristan und Isolde; LSO/Rattle – review

    • Leeds Lieder festival review – from inner city to international, world-class music making

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Album reviews

  • Classical home listening: new releases from the Dudok Quartet and Choir of Merton College, Oxford

  • Schumann: Dichterliebe and Kerner Lieder review – as fine a recorded performance of Dichterliebe as any of recent years.

  • Webern: String Quartets; Bach: The Art of Fugue review – warm performances of enigmatic works

  • Classical home listening: more Eric Coates from John Wilson; Serse from Harry Bicket; and John Bridcut’s new film

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

People

  • Feel the force
    The thrilling Icelandic soundscapes of Anna Thorvaldsdottir

  • Director Adele Thomas
    ‘In theatre, you need a private income just to live’

  • Obituary
    Christopher Nupen

  • ‘I was swallowing the piano whole’
    Stephen Hough on life as a prodigy – and playing for Jimmy Savile

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

You may have missed

  • Turbocharge philanthropy, conga to Beethoven, ditch the ukuleles:
    10 ways to save classical music

  • Rebel, rapist, libertine or libertarian?
    Staging Mozart’s Don Giovanni

  • The coronation
    Composer Iain Farrington on making music fit for a king – and what the cameras didn’t show

  • ‘Like sex and religion, we don’t like to talk about memory’
    Pianist Angela Hewitt on how she keeps hers in shape

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Guides

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

    Leah Broad

  • The best classical music works of the 21st century

  • A guide to contemporary classical music

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

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

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