The French-American composer Betsy Jolas reaches her centenary this year, and this is being celebrated by the first recording of her orchestral music. These are all recent works, dating from 2006 to 2021, and reveal a composer who deserves far

The Carnival Season in 1715 was a time of great uproar – not only for the two months of the Carnival season but also because Europe was in a time of change. In France, Louis XIV had just died, leaving

Sir András Schiff now rarely announces his recital programmes in advance; he reveals them on stage, or via a sheet of paper outside the hall after the concert, although what he plays is not unpredictable to those familiar with his

Gaetano Donizetti’s setting of the final days of Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, as Anna Bolena, is a story of love and hate, loyalty and lies, and, ultimately, one woman’s death so another can take her place. In today’s

Last week, Yunchan Lim appeared in Hong Kong with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields under the baton of Wilson Ng, bringing us his own take of the piano concerto in A minor by Robert Schumann. I sat

In Brazil’s contemporary classical music scene, Sonoras continues to redefine what a composer collective can be. Formed in 2023 under the artistic direction of João Marcondes, the group brings together emerging women composers whose latest release, Opus 4, presents eleven original works shaped

Two farewell-themed concerts took place at the Shanghai Concert Hall on 3 and 4 April. The first saw Mark Padmore and Dame Imogen Cooper perform Winterreise, Schubert’s bleak song cycle of departure. The following evening, Cooper gave a pre-retirement recital,

Founded in 2019, the Leonkoro Quartet is perhaps one of the most dazzling rising stars among today’s string quartets. In 2022, they won the prestigious Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, sweeping nine special prizes and emerging as the youngest