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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Classical music & opera

  • Roger Wright, CEO of Britten Pears Arts

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

  • Taking his time … Osmo Vänskä.

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

    Conductor completes his Mahler cycle with this unfussy and effective recording
  • Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion.

    Album review
    Rectangles and Circumstance – collaborative and gleefully eclectic collection

    All five musicians share writing and performing duties on these 10 songs. The closing version of Schubert’s An die Musik is mesmerisingly beautiful
  • Ian Bostridge in Winterreise at Bath’s Ustinov studio.

    Review
    Winterreise – agony and ecstasy as Bostridge and Drake bring Schubert’s song cycle to dramatic life

  • Backstage during dress rehearsals

    The Guardian picture essay
    Love, laughs and lavish designs: The Merry Widow at Glyndebourne

  • Three adults confer in a cabin while a woman in gold cloak lurks outside

    Review
    Blond Eckbert – Judith Weir’s bare-bones opera kicks off Aldeburgh festival

  • ‘She was game for all of it’ … Eva-Maria Westbroek wearing prosthetic breasts in Anna Nicole.

    Anguished arias and Anna Nicole Smith
    Antonio Pappano’s heart-stopping Royal Opera highs

Live reviews

  • Katia and Marielle Labèque perform the Cocteau Trilogy in the Barbican Hall.

    Katia and Marielle Labèque review – Glass’s Cocteau trilogy perfumes the air, literally

  • Thomas Atkins (Boris) and Natalya Romaniw (Katya) in Katya Kabanova at Grange Park Opera.

    Katya Kabanova review – Romaniw soars in cogent take on Janáček’s tragedy

  • Drama and suspense … Roland Wood as Michele and Alexia Voulgaridou as Giorgetta in Il Tabarro.

    Il Trittico review – an eloquent, gutsy outpouring of Puccini’s passion and pain

  • Danielle de Niese (Hanna Glawari) and Germán Olvera (Count Danilo Danilovitsch), centre, in The Merry Widow by Franz Lehár at Glyndebourne.

    The Merry Widow review – De Niese and Olvera are compelling, but camp fun stifles subtlety

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Album reviews

  • Worth the wait … Janine Jansen playing with the Oslo Philharmonic, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä.

    Sibelius and Prokofiev Violin Concertos album review – freewheeling rapport never sounds forced

  • VOICES8 Foundation - press handout image - TSOL 01

    To Sing of Love album review – sweetly glowing, beautifully coloured choral music

  • Takács Quartet.

    Schubert: String Quartets in G, D887 and B Flat, D112 album review – Takács take their time, this time

  • Claire Booth and Christopher Glynn.

    Schoenberg: Expressionist Music album review – thoughtful and illuminating collection

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People

  • 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

  • Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn

    ‘Music for you must only be an ornament’
    How Fanny Mendelssohn’s voice was stifled, then saved

  • Martyn Brabbins rehearsing with English National Opera Orchestra at the Henry Wood Hall in London.

    News
    ENO’s music director resigns over proposed cuts to musical staff positions

  • Joana Mallwitz

    Conducting
    Joana Mallwitz is the first woman to lead a Berlin orchestra. And, no, she hasn’t seen Tár

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You may have missed

  • 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’

  • Trumpet soloist Alison Balsom performed with the L.A. Philharmonic, conducted by Bramwell Tovey, on his "Songs of the Paradise Saloon," at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Nov. 10, 2013. (Photo by Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

    Alison Balsom
    ‘This is the most important piece written for the trumpet in 200 years’

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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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