Journalist, photographer and social commentator.
Herbert von Karajan had a habit of conducting concerts with his eyes closed. He knew he could trust his players to follow him blindly. For some players this was a slightly unsettling experience, yet the concerts offered an incredible sense […]
Noone, not even Monet, could paint the nuances of different kinds of snow as evocatively as Pekka Halonen Pekka Halonen’s snow landscapes are symphonies in white, rooted firmly in the Finnish home key. He rendered the textures and tonal variations of […]
Light on drama and heavy on formulaic plot solutions, La Rondine sits well outside Puccini’s top-tier operas, but it proves perfectly enjoyable thanks to the strong performances of a cast led by the Albanian prima donna Ermonela Jaho, all under […]
The reggae forefather and Jamaican icon Jimmy Cliff died at 81 on Monday 24 November. Jimmy Cliff was a pioneering reggae artist, briefly an actor, a music rebel, and a very generous interviewee. He lived what he preached. He may […]
Is the AI revolution going to have as profound an effect on society as the Industrial Revolution had on the Midlands toward the end of the 18th century? Were people at that time as aware of a changing job market […]
The exhibition Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Vienna at The Finnish National Gallery suggests that Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s more mature mythical style was influenced by his encounters with the Viennese Secession movement. His paintings, it’s hinted, in turn made an impact on Gustav […]
The Finnish Baroque Orchestra presented Haydn’s final great masterpiece, the oratorio Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) in Helsinki, Bern and Zürich together with the Zürcher Sing-Akadenie and three world-class soloists. Florian Helgath, widely recognised as one of the world’s leading choral […]
Richard Strauss’ Elektra is a brutal opera. The title role requires a dramatic soprano to maintain total control across her entire range, from low A to high C. While navigating the rapidly descending and ascending vocal lines, she must […]
Berliner Philharmoniker recordings · Kirill Petrenko · Arnold Schoenberg 3 CD / 1 Blu-ray Disc The Berlin Philharmoniker, under the direction of Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko, presents a box set of live recordings featuring some of Schönberg’s most ‘beloved’ works, including […]
The Vienna Philharmonic are regular guests at BBC Proms, and during their visits audiences expect to hear at least one quintessentially Viennese work. On their first night we were treated to Bruckner’s magnificent (unfinished) Symphony No.9, premiered in 1903 in […]
To put on a production of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas (1689 ) presents several challenges right from the outset. First, the musical sources are fragmentary. The earliest surviving scores date from 1775 or later and they lack enough […]
Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades – or Pique Dame – was the last opera Stalin attended. Though he had some appreciation for classical music – as depicted in The Death of Stalin – he was never particularly fond of opera. […]