Classical music

Elgar: Violin Concerto album review – Vilde Frang’s exceptional performance makes this one of the finest to appear on disc | Classical music

September 5, 2024

Huw Montague Rendall: Contemplation album review – young opera star justifies the buzz | Classical music

August 29, 2024

Opera fans will be familiar with Huw Montague Rendall’s surnames – from his mezzo-soprano mother Diana and tenor father David respectively – but...

Smetana & Schubert: Piano Trios album review – immensely promising debut | Classical music

August 22, 2024

This is the Trio Bohémo’s first CD, and it’s an immensely promising debut. Schubert’s great E flat Piano Trio D929 and Smetana’s Trio...

The factional anthem: why dictators, leaders and protesters have fought over Beethoven’s Ninth | Proms 2024

August 19, 2024

There was nothing unusual – the world being as it is – in the fact that Hulk Hogan was one of more erudite...

Schumann: Works for Oboe and Piano album review – beautifully effective reinventions | Classical music

August 16, 2024

Of the eight works that Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake play on this disc – seven by Robert Schumann and one by his...

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

August 9, 2024

Pitch darkness. Then a single spotlight on a piano in the middle of the stage. A figure walks on – head down, almost...

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

August 8, 2024

Barely nine months after the final release in Deutsche Grammophon’s latest survey of the Shostakovich symphonies (with Andris Nelsons and the Boston orchestra),...

Aigul Akhmetshina: Aigul album review – mezzo from Bashkortostan is an insouciant star | Classical music

August 1, 2024

‘I sing for myself,” Carmen insists, and you believe it when Aigul Akhmetshina sings her – as the 28-year-old mezzo-soprano from rural Bashkortostan...