Dame Patricia Routledge trained not only as an actress but also as a singer and had considerable experience and success in musical theatre, both in this country and in the United States of America. Her many awards include a Tony for her Broadway performance in the Styne-Harburg musical “Darling of the Day” and a Laurence … [Read More]

Early in the development of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’ extraordinary The Light in the Piazza it was thought that Chicago Lyric Opera might be tendering a commission for the piece. It wasn’t to be. Broadway beckoned. But this most sophisticated of hybrids has a foot in both worlds and the presence of RENÉE FLEMING … [Read More]

In 2007 Gramophone magazine uncovered an extraordinary fraud that rocked the classical music industry. Concert pianist Joyce Hatto – a little-known artist of moderate talent – was suddenly the name on everyone’s lips when a series of recordings (some 100 of them) flooded the market winning plaudits in the press and on BBC Radio 3 … [Read More]

TIME is the overriding motto for the 2016 DRESDEN FESTIVAL. Music can play with time in so many interesting ways, music can even suspend time creating frozen moments, moments of stasis where time ceases to exist – and in the words of festival director Jan Vogler “A good concert always provides us with a magical … [Read More]

Simon Stephens’ Carmen Disruption upends the expectations of anyone entering the Almeida Theatre. It’s a kind of living poetry, taking its cue from Bizet’s ever-popular opera but taking it into ever darker territory. When does an artist’s assumption of a role end and real life take over? This is the Carmen we know and love, … [Read More]

The brothers Erik, Ken, and Mark Schumann founded the SCHUMANN QUARTET in 2007 and it might well have been an all-family affair had the cellist’s twin sister chosen to switch from violin to viola and join them. The Schumann brothers are of German/Japanese heritage – an interesting mix of temperaments – and perhaps because of … [Read More]

Every now and again – but only very rarely – a professional engagement comes along that is so personal, so loaded with treasured associations, that it transcends all normal parameters and takes on a significance all of its own. This was such an occasion. I first met Dame Janet two years ago on the jury … [Read More]

The Polish composer Miecyzlaw Weinberg – his Holocaust opera The Passenger caused quite a stir in David Pountney’s premiere staging – has a new champion. The talented young German violinist Linus Roth has taken his music and his legacy to heart in a big way. New recordings of the complete Sonatas and the little heard … [Read More]

With the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s much-lauded Shostakovich cycle on Naxos the young maestro talks to Edward Seckerson about a masterpiece the Soviet authorities tried but failed to sabotage at its first performances. YevgenyYevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar” with its accusations of anti-Semitism was the flashpoint but social protest runs deep in the piece and … [Read More]