Vuelio,"the leading UK provider of PR & media solutions", maintains a vast media database, and has been publishing annual league tables of blogs across a wide range of sectors of society since 2008. T...

You can't explain stage presence like Anoushka Shankar’s. It just "is". When she steps out in front of a completely packed Royal Albert Hall, and utters a welcoming, exploratory, London-ish “Hi... wel...

Germany is a nation steeped in music. And the Deutscher Jazzpreis (German Jazz Prize), an important and well-attended annual gathering in the country’s jazz calendar, serves as a good reminder of that...

Album · 2025 · 9 Songs

Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony)

Brahms: Lieder Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Gerold Huber (piano) (Sony)

In this new album, three top-flight musicians based in Berlin, guitarist Ronny Graupe, Lucia Cadotsch (voice) and Kit Downes (piano) work collaboratively, superbly, as a real team. The music, some wel...

YouTube video by Bernard Hughes

Anne Sebba's new book tells the remarkable story of the women's orchestra of Auschwitz

Donizetti: Songs Vols. 3 & 4 Michael Spyres (tenor), Carlo Rizzi (piano) – Vol. 3, Marie-Nicole Lemieux (mezzo-soprano), Giulio Zappa (piano) – Vol. 4. (Opera Rara)

You could plan an entire concert season around the theme of “late style”, its paradoxes and variations. For this one-off, many of us expected a concentrated mesh of Edward Said’s only-connect observat...

The German theologian, pastor and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a saintly, courageous figure, of major historical significance. Those are good reasons to ensure that his stor...

Quartets Through a Time of Change: music by Ravel, Durey, Tailleferre and Milhaud Brother Tree Sound (First Hand Records)

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston just gets better and better, both as singer and as actor. Last night’s recital at Temple Church had an unusual and wide-ranging programme – consisting of a first half hop...

Spare a thought – please – for Leipzig-born pianist Jutta Hipp (1925-2003). In 1956, she became the very first woman to record albums in her own name for the Blue Note label. Earlier this month was th...

Nine billion streams a year. That’s the sheer scale on which the music of Ludovico Einaudi reaches audiences. The Italian, who will be 70 this November, is courteous and genial in person – I interview...

Nine billion streams a year. That’s the sheer scale on which the music of Ludovico Einaudi reaches audiences. The Italian, who will be 70 this November, is courteous and genial in person – I interview...

Internationales Jazzfestival Münster 2025. "Freemonk" und "Odyssey" Internationales Jazzfestival Münster 2025 Das Markenzeichen des Internationalen Jazzfestivals Münster ist der neugierige Blick auf d...

This concert was an effusion of pure joy. Billed as the German National Orchestra, the Bundesjugendorchester (Federal Youth Orchestra), all of whose players are aged from 14 to 19, make a glorious, po...

Paavo Järvi: The Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)

As always, great concerts have outnumbered great opera productions over a year, and all of our national orchestras can be proud of their record. I’ve sometimes started by celebrating youth, and it’s g...

YouTube video by Norwegian Soloists' Choir - Topic

Ireland takes the palm for best of 2024, with Wexford hitting comic heights among its three rarities in Donizettian let’s-make-an-opera, while Irish National Opera gave us a world-class Salome, a Viva...