Levelling the score

Grace Williams loved the sea. In later life, BBC television cameras captured one of her daily morning walks in Barry on the coast of Glamorgan – she strides purposefully along, looking out over the Br

Kahchun Wong remembers vividly the moment it happened. ‘With an orchestra, you know it when it clicks, when there is a chemistry,’ he recalls. ‘I went to the first rehearsal without any expectation. I

IT’S not often that someone in their sixties embarks on a new, highly successful career, but that’s exactly what Joanna Borrett has done. The part-time classical composer’s music is about to be studie

Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini Alpha ALPHA1092 76:29 mins The most familiar of the symphonies here, if only because it has a nickname, is No. 55, whose ‘Schoolmaster’ title arises out of the

Why we need orchestras

‘We’re going to have a tonal centre and tap our feet, and that’s the way it is.’ Steve Reich is in full flow, talking to me from his home in New York. ‘The big break, the knife down the line, was betw