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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Classical music & opera

  • Never any sense of awkwardness or falseness … l to r, Julius Drake and Nicholas Daniel.

    Classical album of the week
    Schumann: Works for Oboe and Piano album – beautifully effective reinventions

  • Kitty Whately as Jocasta in Oedipus Rex, Edinburgh International Festival ©JessShurte 107

    Edinburgh festival 2024
    Oedipus Rex – an unmissable and inclusive update of Stravinsky

    There was wonderfully precise singing and magnificently dramatic orchestral work, but the promenading community chorus, featuring local NHS workers, may have been the crowning glory of this bold Scottish Opera staging
  • Antonio Vivaldi.

    Feature
    Vivaldi taught Venetian orphan girls – did they help write his music in return?

    A chance discovery introduced me to the composer’s work with abandoned children. The more I learned, the more I wondered about the creative role they played in his music
  • Tigran Kakhvejyan and Alexandria Moon in The Rape of Lucretia.

    Review
    The Rape of Lucretia – British Youth Opera goes subterranean for a rip-roaring Britten

  • A great performance … Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

    Proms 2024
    Prom 31: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Barenboim – an unforgettable and heroic return

  • Alexandre Bloch conducts the National Youth Orchestra in Mahler’s First during Prom 30.

    Proms 2024
    Prom 30: Bloch/NYO – a roof-raising display of virtuosity and shared joy

  • Nils Frahm at Melt Festival.

    Feature
    Subdued, sleepy and despised by snobs: how minimalist piano eclipsed classical music

Live reviews

  • Violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter stands in a long pink dress and takes the hand of conductor Daniel Barenboim in front of members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

    The week in classical: Prom 31: West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/ Barenboim; GBSR Duo – review

  • Scream queen … Milena Knauß in Der Vampyr.

    Der Vampyr review – feminist reboot has plenty of blood, camp and tears

  • Gaëlle Arquez and Saimir Pirgu in Opéra-Comique’s Carmen.

    The week in classical: Carmen; Yuja Wang; Leonore Piano Trio; Tristan und Isolde – review

  • Captivating … The Fairy Queen.

    Prom 24: The Fairy Queen review – street-dance, hip-hop style suits Purcell surprisingly well

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Album reviews

  • Quatuor Molinari

    Scelsi: Complete String Quartets and String Trio album review – fine, fiercely committed performances

  • Klaus Mäkelä.

    Shostakovich: Symphonies 4, 5 and 6 album review – Klaus Mäkelä takes on history

  • The Past and I: 100 Years of Thomas Hardy.

    The Past & I: 100 Years of Thomas Hardy review – the writer’s poetry gets a sensuous second life in music

  • Jane Stanley, pictured during recording sessions for Cerulean Orbits

    Jane Stanley: Cerulean Orbits album review – music with an ear for texture and economy

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People

  • Jakub Jozef Orlinski at Warner Music Uk, South Kensington, London, for Q&A New Review, 26/06/2024. Sophia Evans for The Observer

    Q&A
    Countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński: ‘Breakdancing feeds into my performances – music dictates the way you move on stage’

  • Roger Wright, CEO of Britten Pears Arts

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

  • Jerrold Northrop Moore began his Elgar researches as a student by interviewing people who had known the composer.

    Obituary
    Jerrold Northrop Moore

  • Actor and writer Paterson Joseph

    ‘I was told I was stupid’
    Peep Show’s Paterson Joseph on his debut novel – and writing three operas

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You may have missed

  • People seemed to be conscious, judging from strawberries consumed … Glastonbury 2024.

    Radio 3's Georgia Mann
    I’ll take your brain to another dimension … my classical DJ set at Glastonbury

  • Backstage during dress rehearsals

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

  • ‘Our first time’ … Gemma New will conduct the world premiere of City of Floating Sounds.

    In the key of 5G
    The ‘dimensionalist’ who wrote a symphony for 1,000 phones

  • Beatrice Harrison, cellist, with microphone

    The spy, the songbird and the sham that wasn’t
    How I restored broadcasting history

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Guides

  • PBBHMT 1216 Portrait of Ethel Smyth" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ddf820dfcbefcb23b51c3a88a36af3566b55b065/0_111_2046_1227/master/2046.jpg?width=120&dpr=1&s=none" loading="lazy" data-chromatic="ignore" class="dcr-l300o4"/>

    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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