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

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

‘They shut me up in Prose – As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet – Because they liked me “still”.’ The words (and eccentric capitalisation) are Emily Dickinson’s, the opening salvo in a bol

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

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

Lidy Blijdorp; Tobias Borsboom Channel Classics CCS47726 65:29 mins Using the recording genre creatively is an art in itself. What can it offer that perhaps a live concert cannot? I think it allows mo