Features

Inside Features

Kit Armstrong: Playing by numbers

Sunday, 20 February 2011

Maths, topology, computer games, origami...oh yes, and music. Michael Church on the many talents of a piano prodigy who has come of age

Independent classical podcast: Vasily Petrenko

Friday, 18 February 2011

The latest instalment in Vasily Petrenko's highly acclaimed cycle of the Shostakovich symphonies offers a telling flashback to the composer's youth.

Aldeburgh Festival - classical treat if you pay enough

Friday, 11 February 2011

Members increasingly get first shout for tickets at events such as the Aldeburgh Festival. Join or prepare to queue for returns, says Jessica Duchen.

Independent Classical podcast: Sir John Tomlinson

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Sir John Tomlinson - one of the great Wagnerians of our time and surely the greatest Wotan since Hans Hotter - returns to English National Opera to sing the role of Gurnemanz, the eldest and wisest of the Grail knights, in Wagner's last opera Parsifal.

The relative beauty of the violin

Friday, 28 January 2011

Einstein sensed the secrets of the universe in music. A professor and a virtuoso are to explore the connection. By Jessica Duchen

Independent classical podcast: Kate Royal

Friday, 28 January 2011

The words "Kate" and "Royal" may temporarily be causing some confusion for the Google search engine but to singing aficionados the world over this royal Kate should be the one in pole position.

Soprano Claire Rutter is aiming for a happy Finnish

Friday, 28 January 2011

Singing the title role in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia is a tough call at any time, but for soprano Claire Rutter, who stars in this role at ENO on Monday, it's going to be tougher than usual. For film-maker Mike Figgis is making his operatic directorial debut with a production that will mark several firsts: it will be simultaneously broadcast by Sky on three TV channels, it will be screened in 3D in selected cinemas, and it will be interspersed with footage of a film he has already shot in Rome, to a soundtrack created from the score.

Do we really need to sex up opera?

Thursday, 27 January 2011

A new production about Anna Nicole Smith and the arrival of 3D broadcasts aim to widen the appeal of an art form that is perceived as elitist.

Heads up: Anna Nicole

Sunday, 23 January 2011

An aria of sex, drugs, gold-digging and tragedy

The cellist who wants to shake up London with a classical mystery tour

Friday, 21 January 2011

The South Bank Centre's new artist-in-residence aims to fill every corner of the venue with new music, he tells Jessica Duchen

Joseph Kaiser: The tenor who tamed Tamino

Friday, 21 January 2011

There are many reasons to look forward to David McVicar's lovely take on The Magic Flute, now being revived at Covent Garden. Statuesque Kate Royal sings Pamina, ebullient Christopher Maltman sings Papageno, and that irresistible soubrette Anna Devin incarnates Papagena, but the most interesting casting is Joseph Kaiser as Tamino, the sweet boy who falls in love with a face in a painting and undergoes Herculean trials to get his girl. Tamino is often presented as a pale, two-dimensional character, but this Canadian tenor – a larger-than-life figure with a gale-force personality– will have none of it.

Simone Dinnerstein: Adventures in baby-sitting

Sunday, 16 January 2011

Once, she was reciting in prisons. Today, the pianist is a classical superstar. What happened? Bach – and her first child

Piano's new superstars hit the wrong notes – and gloriously

Friday, 14 January 2011

At last, says Jessica Duchen, the robotic sterility of recitals is being swept away by young artists for whom personality is as important than accuracy

Aleksandra Kurzak finds a voice of her own

Friday, 14 January 2011

Ever since, as a small girl, she sang along with her opera-singer mother's warm-ups – shadowing her coloratura note-for-note in Queen of the Night – Aleksandra Kurzak has been up for challenges. She spent her childhood preparing to become a professional violinist – regarding singing as being too easy – but when Placido Domingo singled out this feisty young Pole in his Operalia festival, she decided to give singing a go instead.

Bartók: Extended play for a magical Magyar

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

There's no special reason for the South Bank's year-long celebration of Bartók, says Jessica Duchen. But who needs one?

Independent Operacast: Mike Figgis

Tuesday, 11 January 2011

Opera is the one thing MIKE FIGGIS hasn't done before and as he bows in at English National Opera with Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia he talks at length to EDWARD SECKERSON about theatre, film, and his first love - music.

Sophie Bevan: Born to sing

Friday, 7 January 2011

Fast-rising soprano Sophie Bevan comes from a family of eight musical children and an extended musical family of 60. Ahead of her landmark solo recital tonight, she talks to Jessica Duchen

Franz Liszt: A Romantic remembered

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

Franz Liszt changed the course of music, yet his work has fallen out of favour. He's about to get the recognition he deserves, though, as Nicola Christie discovers

Albums of the year: Classical

Sunday, 26 December 2010

Chamber music triumphed over grand projects in 2010, with the notable exception of Sir Mark Elder's luminous Götterdämmerung with the Hallé.

The Year in Review: Best classical & opera of 2010

Friday, 24 December 2010

Independent podcast: Alfie Boe

Tuesday, 21 December 2010

Alfie Boe - affectionately known as the nation's favourite tenor - is the latest in a distinguished line of big voices to swagger into the role of Jean Valjean in Boublil and Sch�nberg's epic musical Les Mis�rables.

Maestro, please stop preaching at us

Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Beware orchestras with the word 'Peace' in their name, says Jessica Duchen – their misguided idealism devalues the term

Q&A: Tony Hall, Chief Executive of the Royal Opera House

Monday, 13 December 2010

Tony Hall, 59, has been chief executive of the Royal Opera House (ROH), Covent Garden, since 2001. He is the highest paid arts organisation chief in Britain, and is also chair of the Cultural Olympiad, the series of cultural events being organised to coincide with the 2012 London Olympics.

Observations: Back in a good head space

Friday, 3 December 2010

Rolando Villazon has recently garnered some terrible reviews for the Southbank concert in May which representedhis come-back after throatsurgery. On Monday he’s singing there again, but as far as he’s concerned the problem was in thecritics’ heads. He says: “All that was at fault was my memory – I forgot the words of an arias.