Courses for composers

No matter how famous a composer is in their lifetime, their fate is decided after they die. Will their style fall quickly out of fashion? Was enough of their music published to make it possible to per

Premières Symphonies Works by Bizet, Gounod and Saint-Saëns Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo/Kazuki Yamada Alpha Classics ALPHA1149 89:27 mins (2CD) The most familiar of these three classically

When I first heard the classical music of North India, my musical world shifted on its axis. I was in the cinema, watching Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, which had just opened in the UK and was takin

For a conductor who eventually achieved global recognition and left a dazzlingly varied discography, Sir Roger Norrington was something of a slow starter. Born in Oxford in 1934, his early musical act

I’m a scientist by nature and have been since the age of five when my dad bought a set of encyclopaedias that had a section on the stars and planets. From that point on I was hooked by the wonders of

I enjoyed reading Francesco Piemontesi’s Concert Heaven, Concert Hell interview (September) about his ‘best’ and ‘worst’ performance... in the semi-final of the Elisabeth Competition in 2007! In fact,