Music

It is time to make a stand against incomprehensible modern music

‘Glyndebourne – which can feel like travelling a very long way just for a picnic – is often filled for the second act by people taking themost expensive nap it is possible to take’

Classical music is full of savage backbiters, always ready to pour vitriol on more successful artists 

Eighty years old this month, the Canadian singer and songwriter has always been proud to be a Jew first and last — as his songs reveal

A musical evening in North London recreates the spirit of the Weimar Republic

Standing at the apex of our culture, the operatic art form remains the supreme test of any composer — as I know from experience

William Walton was inspired by sexual energy

Already embattled, music critics have done themselves no favours by
attacking a young singer’s figure

The British composer’s music fits into no convenient category. That is what makes it so brilliant

It isn’t every day that one attends the UK première of a Bach Passion, least of all one thought to have been lost forever. Admittedly, this work is not by Johann Sebastian Bach, but Carl Philipp Emanuel, the most important of the four Bach sons (he had 20 children by two wives, of whom ten survived into adulthood) who were professional musicians. In the 300 years since C.P.E. Bach was born in 1714, his reputation has fluctuated wildly. In his lifetime it rose steadily until his death in 1788, by which time he had outshone his father. Haydn learned from him, Mozart performed him and Beethoven revered him. Then, with Mendelssohn’s revival of Johann Sebastian’s St Matthew Passion in 1829, Emanuel Bach suffered almost total eclipse until the 1960s.