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

● AS WE ALL KNOW, OPERA IS THE ...

Joyce DiDonato (mezzo), Time for Three Platoon PLAT29101 65:05 mins Is it a song cycle? An opera? Musical theatre? Kevin Puts’s new work Emily – No Prisoner Be, based on texts by Emily Dickinson, is a

Yunchan Lim (piano) Decca 4871517 77 mins That Yunchan Lim is a remarkable pianist is self-evident in everything he plays. But let’s hope he doesn’t pay too much heed to the hype his singular talent a

Malin Broman (violin); Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Harding OUR Recordings 9.70867 22 mins This recording comes from the premiere of Helen Grime’s Concerto in 2016, but it has taken a long

Had Robin Holloway published Music’s Odyssey—described by its author as “an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music”—30 years ago, he might well have got away with it. By day