General Director Alex Reedijk is 20 years in the post as he launches Scottish Opera’s new season. He looks forward and back with Keith Bruce. As Scottish Opera launches the programme for its 2026/2…

City Halls, Glasgow Some members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus doubtless sang Hector Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ under the baton of Emmanuel Krivine when the SCO last performed the ora…

City Halls, Glasgow It was hard not to be impressed by the chutzpah of the programming: two of the finest Mozart Piano Concertos, Nos 21 and 24, with one of the most admired soloists of our time, Y…

City Halls, Glasgow The fingerprints of the BBC SSO’s chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth were all over this Thursday matinee programme, but the man himself was not there, having called off unwell. T…

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall Some years ago I recall hearing violin showman Maxim Vengerov interviewed on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, and Sean Rafferty asking if he was ever irritated by audiences coming …

Scottish Opera: Opera Highlights Gartmore Village Hall With its community-run pub, The Black Bull, next door, Gartmore Village Hall in the Trossachs has the atmosphere of some of the further-flung …

Scotland’s violin star, Nicola Benedetti, talks to Keith Bruce as she goes out on the road with a small group from this weekend. Nicola Benedetti has hardly been idle, embracing motherhood and marr…

Usher Hall, Edinburgh / Glasgow Royal Concert Hall The Scottish Chamber Orchestra entitled the opening of its new season From Darkness to Light and that idea was just as audible in the concerts tha…

Trinity Church, Cumnock In Crail Church during the East Neuk Festival earlier this year, young baritone James Newby gave a remarkable performance of Schubert’s first major song cycle Die schone Mul…

St Mary’s, Haddington Perfect though the use of Haddington’s Corn Exchange proved for Britten’s Albert Herring at last year’s Lammermuir Festival, Scottish Opera’s return to St Mary’s for its 2025 …

Director Jacopo Spirei tells KEN WALTON why his new Double Bill production for Scottish Opera, opening at Lammermuir Festival, has all the quirky trappings of a Netflix series.  Ready for a do…

Edinburgh Playhouse / The Lyceum At the March launch of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival programme, the Festival’s Head of Music, Nik Zekulin, conceded that the opera content was slighter …

Usher Hall, Edinburgh Although he made a very brief one of opposition to the war in Ukraine at the beginning of March 2022, no-one looks to the SCO’s Russian Principal Conductor for political state…

With a luxury cast bringing anguish, believability and vocal perfection to Mozart’s opera of love and divided loyalty, this concert performance was flawless

Once pipped for pop stardom, Iestyn Davies opted instead for success as a classical “yodeller”. The award-winning countertenor stars with Australian circus ensemble Circa in Gluck’s Orpheus and Eur…

The opening concert of this year’s Edinburgh international festival saw conductor Sofi Jeannin put in a remarkable shift marshalling combined choirs

At the Opening Concert of this year’s East Neuk Festival, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Principal Guest conductor paused between the first and second movements of Lars-Erik Larsson’s Pastoral Su…

The 49th St Magnus Festival takes a moment to remember co-founder Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, but will his piano measure up to the memory? Pianist Mihal Ritivoiu talks to KEN WALTON There are many re…

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow Not for the first time, the idea of a chamber music concert in Glasgow’s grand galleries turned out to be better than the reality because of the challenges of the v…

Soprano Heloise Werner talks to Keith Bruce about her collaboration with the Scottish Ensemble – and other plans. There is nothing Scottish about French-British soprano, cellist and composer Helois…

St John’s Kirk, Perth The most unchanged and regularly used venue in the half century of the Perth Festival of the Arts is also roughly contemporaneous with some of the music often heard there, the…

City Halls, Glasgow The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s former principal cellist David Watkin was not just a hugely respected musician but also a man much loved by his colleagues and then by students …

Gilbert and Sullivan’s 150-year-old comic opera gets a lively update, while there is plenty of fun to be had at the expense of politicians in Toby Hessian’s pacy new operetta

City Halls, Glasgow Visits to Scotland by pianist Yeol Eum Son – who has appeared with the BBC SSO, as an EIF Queen’s Hall recitalist, as a guest soloist in the Usher Hall’s Sunday concert series, …

Posts about NEWS written by VoxCarnyx

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Mozart’s Magic Flute, in its story and subject matter and in the libretto of Emanuel Schikander, is very much a piece of its time, which contemporary stage directors…

Funding austerity has shaped this year’s International Festival, writes Keith Bruce Politically-astute EIF director Nicola Benedetti prefaced the media briefing revealing her third Festival program…

Glasgow Art Club Scots tenor Matthew McKinney already has an impressive CV, roles at English Touring Opera followed by first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards at Wigmore Hall last year and a sti…

City Halls, Glasgow As it was revealed in the programme, it seems most unlikely that Sir James MacMillan was the only soul in the City Hall unaware that the Scottish premiere of his new Concerto fo…

Olivia Fuchs’ production of Janáček’s opera is a remarkable achievement, with Orla Boylan’s riveting performance at its heart. In the pit, Martyn Brabbins is superb

Conductor Martyn Brabbins speaks to Keith Bruce as he makes his career debut in Scotland with Janacek’s The Makropulos Affair As a mentor to young conductors at the St Magnus Festival and at the Ro…

St John’s Cathedral, Oban For their return visit to Oban Music Society, the flute and piano partnership of Fiona Sweeney and Ben Eames, now trading under the name of the Greek goddess of sound, ass…

City Halls, Glasgow At the end of the week when the BBC Scottish announced a new Principal Guest Conductor in Delyana Lazarova, we should have been seeing her predecessor in the post, Ilan Volkov, …

Creative Scotland, the arts funding body, has acted to ensure that arts organisations spend less of their time making application to Creative Scotland (CS) for money. In a widely-welcomed, if overd…

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Naturalism has ruled the roost on Scotland’s opera stages for so many years now that it is bracingly refreshing to see a production quite as committed to the directo…

Perth Concert Hall On stage, if not in their publicity shots, new duo Luban are a sartorially mismatched couple: guitarist Sean Shibe has a fondness for dressing up and violinist Aidan O’Rourke res…

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall The young team were in charge at Scotland’s national orchestra, and it was an excellent advert for the RSNO’s recruitment policy. Both still in their late 20s, soloist Ra…

'A glorious excursion': RSNO/Sondergard at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall