1200 seats sold out within seconds. That was how the audience responded to Augustin Hadelich’s only solo recital in mainland China this September. Last year, he closed off the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra’s season with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Across concert halls

“I am currently reading the Dao De Jing; its ideas about the path (Dao) resonated with the journey in Winterreise.” Mark Padmore thought aloud, while leafing through his worn notebook. The verses of T.S. Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and William Blake

In 2025, the 27-year-old pianist Eric Lu won the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition, a contest described by The Washington Post as “the Olympics of classical music.” Lu had first competed in Warsaw in 2015 and returned ten years later

Praised for “extraordinary sensibility and passionate intensity”, London-based pianist Zeju Fan recently presented a sold-out debut recital at St John’s Smith Square in London during an intense summer heatwave, featuring an ambitious and demanding repertoire, including Beethoven‘s Waldstein Sonata, Berg’s

Canadian pianist Kevin Chen gained international recognition after winning first prize at the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest in 2021, followed by first prize at the Concours de Genève in 2022. A victory at the Arthur Rubinstein International

August is here, and Bayreuth is in the air. The 2026 festival features the German tenor Klaus Florian Vogt singing in all four parts of The Ring of the Nibelung. Elsewhere, the British-German soprano Sarah Wegener has impressed audiences with

Schubert and Beethoven have no doubt been the pianist Paul Lewis’ core repertoire. After following more than thirty of his concerts, I became curious about his most recent Mozart+ programs. Why pair Mozart’s sonatas with Poulenc’s Improvisations, Debussy’s L’Isle joyeuse,

Music has the remarkable ability to transport listeners into imaginary worlds, and few contemporary composers have done so more successfully than Joe Hisaishi. Best known for his longstanding collaboration with Hayao Miyazaki, Hisaishi has created some of the most memorable