Every year, especially during Covid, one must ask oneself if it is worthwhile to make the arduous trip to the poorly connected Adriatic town of Pesaro for the Rossini Opera Festival. This year, after a reduced 2020 program, the ROF

For one night only, the Festival in Aix-en-Provence put on Verdi’s early opera, I Due Foscari. Staging this lesser known work with its unlikely story devoid of much dramatic development, the choice of a concert version was a good one.

Aix-en-Provence’s longstanding summer music festival commands a somewhat inconspicuous position in the European landscape of music festivals. While the Festspiele dominate Salzburg during the summer months, the performances in the arena define Verona during their season, and Bayreuth pulsates during

At the Royal Festival Hall in London on Friday, 9 July, the focus of the concert will be the current climate situation. Composer Laura Bowler’s Houses Slide, commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, is a work for soprano and orchestra that

One of the most sought-after musicians in Hong Kong, pianist Rachel Cheung achieved worldwide acclaim after reaching the finals and winning the Audience Award in Van Cliburn Piano Competition in 2017. She gave a compelling recital entitled “Fantasies” on 31

The idea of Tanztheater (dance theatre) came out of Germany in the 1920s. It started as ‘expressionist dance’ and was reborn in the 1980s in the work of German choreographers such as Pina Bausch and Reinhild Hoffmann. The influences of

The glossy cover of this book features a blown-up photograph of an unassuming gentleman with a deep penetrating gaze. It is quite reasonable to surmise that the subject is an intelligent, astute and empathetic individual, exuding an air of contemplative

To end the Beethoven year, there will be a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna. A simple enough statement but when you add in all the conditions: nothing live, social distancing, pandemic aware, then that statement becomes immensely complicated.