“life is like a room with doors – don’t be afraid to push them open”

Hildur Guðnadóttir is scrolling through her phone. Whereas most people use the device to collect photographs and notes alongside contact numbers, the Icelandic composer records snippets of music. Thes

‘What Americans call safe music bores me,’ declared Michel Legrand in a 2005 interview, in which he reflected on the high profile he had achieved as one of the world’s leading film composers. ‘If you’

Everything We Do Is Music – How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop Elizabeth Alker Faber 304pp (hb) £20 The concept behind Elizabeth’s Alker’s book is spelled out in the subtitle: ‘How 20th-Centu

Sir Donald Runnicles studied at the University of Edinburgh and St John’s College, Cambridge, before beginning his career as a singers’ coach and assistant conductor in Mannheim, Germany. He has been

Had Tchaikovsky had his way, his The Tempest might not actually have had a tempest in it at all. As he first pondered his Shakespearean fantasy-overture in early 1873, the Russian composer considered

Having first attended a concert by Pavarotti (cover profile; October) in Toronto in 1975, over the following years I went to a number of recitals by him, the last one being in 1990. I was working in t