Cracking tunes

Never meet your heroes, so the saying goes. Writing about a favourite subject – classical music – has permitted me occasional opportunity to test that theory. While the odd star might have tarnished a

Music is a serious business. Whether it’s love, death, heartbreak, loneliness, power, conflict, destruction, sin, faith, hope, despair… you name it, every weighty subject and state of mind has been ta

Big Big Train cofounder Gregory Spawton on the records, artists and gigs that are of lasting significance to him.

Ubiquitous pre-concert routines feature furtive programme reading and, for the truly organised, ordering interval refreshments. Activities do not usually include brushing one’s teeth and changing into

John Wallace Born 1949 Trumpeter On 29 July 1981, millions of television viewers worldwide heard the sparkling trumpet of John Wallace introduce Handel’s ‘Let the Bright Seraphim’, sung by Kiri Te Kan

The perhaps wisely uncredited author of the piece about Tellef Johnson’s premiere of Sorabji’s Piano Sonata No. 5 (Full Score, February) seeks to claim ‘due seriousness’ for their report. The presumed