I'll think of something later

The question-mark is there because I can’t pretend an overview of all the great events of last year. That’s why, of course, we had a wide-r...

I promised not to tax your patience with reams of holiday snaps and chat. Yet I think I can justify a brief zigzag across the blog-piste if ...

Peter Bourne, a ‘life member of the Serge Prokofiev Association’ and no relation (I assume) of our hero St. Matthew, e-mailed me to say he h...

...to any readers. It should have been a Christmas greeting, but the selection of images didn't reach me in time before we headed off ...

For those of us who never cared much for Schwarzkopf, and even dared to find flaws in Lisa Della Casa, the times have never been better fo...

While the Royal Ballet has refurbished and refreshed the classic Kenneth MacMillan Romeo and Juliet , English National Ballet continues t...

After the flatulence of Foulds's World Requiem and Korngold's Heliane , what a joy to go back to an intimate oratorio, touched th...

In the wake of my euphoria over The Sacrifice (see below), I felt I had to e-mail James MacMillan, whom I’ve interviewed once and collaborat...

That's to say, not as in Forster's 'two cheers for democracy', but one resounding cheer at the beginning of the week for ...

'Inside the BBC Symphony Orchestra', the somewhat anatomically titled (not by me) course I run at Morley College, has its more gla...

We are fast approaching the 50th anniversary of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's death on 29 November 1957. I came across this plaque marking h...

Simon Annand took this production photograph of the great Paola Dionisotti as the Kostelnicka and outstanding newcomer Jodie McNee as her ...

Let's deal first with the last, potentially most interesting but infinitely the worst of the six concerts I heard in an overloaded week....

'Sibelius unbound' is in fact the title of Esa-Pekka Salonen's Sibelius symphonies cycle with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at th...

Essex can be gorgeous: did you know this? Apart from an earlier excursion to Constable Country, where we found 'I hate boring Dedum'...

While Sophie (see below) sizzles back in Mali, Jeremy and I have been enjoying autumnal pleasures closer to home. The lack of cheap half-ter...