The conductors’ orchestra

I have Sir Neville Marriner to thank for pointing me in the direction of the podium. It was in conversation after a long Academy of St Martin in the Fields tour of Germany in 2004 that Sir Neville fir

German conductor Anja Bihlmaier studied at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and later at the Mozarteum Salzburg, before holding posts at Staatsoper Hannover and Staatstheater Kassel. Since then, she

‘I’ve never been a particularly esoteric person,’ Nicola Benedetti tells me as we sit down to talk following the press launch of her third Edinburgh Festival. And yet, as she explains the theme of thi

Given the many hours he’ll be spending practising and rehearsing, not to mention travelling around the globe from concert hall to concert hall, Aristo Sham will possibly not have a lot of time for sho

By and large, we like to fill the pages of BBC Music Magazine with our enthusiasm for composers and performers alike – it’s a wonderful world out there, teeming with musical talent. However, perhaps w

It was the Viennese critic Hermann Bahr who likened Mahler’s arrival in a hotel lobby to a gust of wind forcing open a window, or water bursting from a pipe. There’s something similarly elemental abou