The new recording by pianist Bruce Levingston, The Elastic Heart of Youth, takes its title from a quotation from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer: ‘The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time’. He’s

Under the brilliant early summer sun, Lüneburg gleams in a striking palette of blue skies, waterways, and Gothic brick architecture, providing an idyllic backdrop for the final chapters of Pygmalion’s ambitious project, Die Wege Bachs. In a profound gesture of

The harpsichord is an instrument of proud, historical contradictions. When treated with theatrical flair, its plucked metal strings can evoke an entire lost world of Baroque opulence; when starved of imagination, however, it risks transforming the concert hall into a

Bilbao, the largest city and economic capital of the Basque Country, isn’t usually on opera lovers’ circuits. But a promising cast occasioned this trip to see Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, a coproduction between ABAO Bilbao (Asociación Bilbaína de Amigos de

America/Beautiful, devised and performed by American-Korean pianist Min Kwon, is a five-volume collection comprising 76 new piano works by American composers inspired by the iconic patriotic song ‘America the Beautiful’, Samuel Ward’s setting of a poem by Katharine Bates. Conceived

Baroque instruments meeting electronic techno? While “crossover” has become a buzzword, the audience’s threshold for surprise is higher than ever. Yet, the Belgian B’Rock Orchestra recently managed to shatter the last remnants of their “early music” label. In their production

Perhaps you have never heard the music of Sophia Maria Westenholz (née Elenore Sophia Maria Fritscher, 1759–1838) — neither had I until listening to this new duo recording by Wu Qian and Juho Pohjonen, which includes the first commercial recording

Georges Bizet (1838–1875) never had the success he wanted in his lifetime. He had two hits in the operas Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth, but both operas came in for criticism. The Pearl Fishers for