Music

After fifty years as a music critic, I finally made it to La Scala. What was I missing? Everything

The passion and dedication at OrchKids, a Baltimore version of El Sistema, cannot fix a broken city

A performance of a modern Israeli classic in a run-down German city put the world’s woes in perspective

The great cellist Yo-Yo Ma at 60 is still phenomenal

Beethoven set the bar impossibly high but composers like myself still regard it as the ultimate challenge

How Britain discovered a lucrative new role as a global cultural powerhouse

Shunned for his politics, Christian Thielemann reveals more than he intended in a book about Wagner

This summer’s dumbing down is just the prelude to ditching everything this great festival stands for

Commercial art forms may yet save the Western tradition from its propensity to self-destruction

The rustbelt city’s orchestra is reinventing its networking role. No wonder Chicago is jealous