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Classical music & opera

  • Barbara Hannigan (soprano) and Bertrand Chamayou (piano) perform at London's Wigmore Hall on Saturday 6 December 2025. Photo by © Sisi Burn

    Review
    Hannigan/Chamayou – strange and beautiful musical magic

    Barbara Hannigan and Bertrand Chamayou were exhilarating in John Zorn’s monumental Jumalattaret; a beautifully intimate performance of Messiaen’s Chants de Terre et de Ciel completed the evening
  • John Savournin, centre, as Capt Corcoran in HMS Pinafore.

    Review
    HMS Pinafore – carry on up the poop deck in ENO’s daffy Gilbert and Sullivan staging

  • The Nash Ensemble at the Ravel album sessions.

    Album review
    Nash Ensemble: Ravel – catches the music’s dazzling light and intriguing shade

  • Nicholas Collon conducts the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

    Album review
    Strauss: An Alpine Symphony; Four Songs Op 27 – nothing is overblown or indulgent

  • Philharmonia / Rouvali / Fazil Say, RFH, 2025

    Review
    Philharmonia/ Rouvali – Fazil Say’s concerto sounds an urgent wakeup call

  • Nicola Benedetti playing violin on stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

    Review
    Nicola Benedetti and friends – delicious bite-sized musical snacks from a violinist still top of her game

  • A Christmas ice rink built around a statue of Pavarotti in a piazza in Pesaro, Marche.

    Frozen-in tenor: Italian mayor apologises over Pavarotti statue stuck in ice rink

Live reviews

  • The Royal Opera's Last Days, Linbury Theatre, 2025.

    Last Days review – Leith’s opera imagining the final moments of Kurt Cobain is truly disturbing

  • Few people got to hear this version when it was new … La Rondine.

    La Rondine review – new version of Puccini’s opera makes aftertaste bitter rather than sweet

  • Dedalus Ensemble play Motor Tapes at Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival.

    Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival review – ghostly echoes, fearless voices and the rattle of milk frothers

  • Jake Ingbar (Armindo) and Katie Bray (Rosmira) in Partenope at the London Coliseum.

    Partenope review – edgy and erotic Handel update

Recordings

  1. Helmut Lachenmann Press publicity portrait © Alexis Descharmes

    Lachenmann: The String Quartets review – Quatuor Diotima draw you into his strange and compelling soundworld

  2. Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

    Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos album review – as supple and coherent as ever as the ACO celebrates 50

  3. Edward Gardner conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, 2024

    Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius album review – Gardner and the LPO’s reading is bold and dramatic

  4. Kirill Petrenko conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker, 2022

    Brahms: Symphony No 1, Tragic Overture album review – Petrenko and the Berliners give Brahms organic momentum

People

  • Avril Coleridge-Taylor sitting at a piano

    Feature
    Out of the shadows: why Avril Coleridge-Taylor deserves to be heard

  • Jacqueline Varsey And Colin Lee in The Mikado @ Savoy Directed by Ian Judge ©Tristram Kenton 9/00 (3 Raveley Street London NW5 2HX) (020 7) 267 5550 Mob 0973 617 355)

    Ian Judge obituary

  • Welsh National Opera’s Sarah Crabtree (left) and Adele Thomas

    Welsh National Opera
    ‘We have permission to be brave’: the women taking charge of crisis-hit WNO

  • Louise Alder as the Countess, with Huw Montague Rendall as the Count, in in Le Nozze Di Figaro at Glyndebourne.

    Interview
    ‘The cultural landscape is decimated’: Louise Alder on stage fright, arts funding and the Last Night of the Proms

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    Music
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  2. Ralph Fiennes conducts in The Choral.

    The Choral
    From fiasco to feted: the story of the Dream of Gerontius, the revolutionary music of The Choral

  3. New York City Ballet in the world premiere of Rotunda, February 2020 – choreography by Justin Peck, music by Nico Muhly

    Moving beyond bar lines: composer Nico Muhly on dancers reimagining his music

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