Greatdame

There are gig venues, and then there’s York Minster, where symphonic metal band Plague Of Angels are playing a show backed by an enormous pipe organ. Unless a bunch of irate Christians get their way

Paris in springtime was the perfect setting for one of this year’s highest-grossing French auctions. The location was Hôtel Drouot in Quartier de l’Opéra, a hub of salerooms which are at the heart of

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

A former convent, beautifully restored for 21st-century living, is inviting a new type of traveller to the glamorous French Riviera

Symphony No. 5; Swanwhite Suite etc Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Nicholas Collon Ondine ODE 1468-2 77:16 mins One of the features of Finland’s impressive music educati

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