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

Picture the scene: you’re about to get up on stage to give a presentation or performance. Something feels off – you look down, and realise your shirt is missing; in fact, you have no clothes on at all

Steven C Smith Oxford University Press 978-0-197-68128-2 312pp (hb) £31.99 Theirs remains one of the most thrilling composer-director collaborations of all time, and while Bernard Herrmann and Alfred

Works by Bach, Vivaldi and Marcello Amandine Beyer (violin); Gli Incogniti Harmonia Mundi HMM90276970 134 mins The communicative warmth and infectious vitality of Amandine Beyer’s performances will ha

Andrey Gugnin (piano) Hyperion CDA684712 83 mins This album of Russian ballet transcriptions sparkles like a glass bauble hanging amidst the fairy lights. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky wrote so colourful

‘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