The Naumburg International Violin Competition, founded in 1925, used to be one of the more interesting talent shows with winners in varied disciplines including Jorge Bolet, William Kapell and Stephen ...

Here’s a statistic you may struggle to believe: 32 years have elapsed since John Williams last won an Academy Award. The most sought after composer in Hollywood since Erich Wolfgang Korngold was last ...

Sofia Demetriades, from London, won the BBC contest with the Tchaikovsky concerto. She’s a student at the Royal Academy of Music. Recorder player Alma Nunez Debretzeni (17) from St Albans came second.

Some demonstrators left early. I suspect they had tickets to a show. The demographic was overwhelmingly middle-class and ...

German media are shining a light on the violinist and composer Szymon Laks, who survived the hell of Auschwitz by leading a prisoners’ orchestra that was nade to play for the oppressors. After the war ...

William Hogarth, who died 262 years ago tomorrow, was by far the most significant English artist of his generation. Charles Lamb deemed Hogarth’s images to be books, filled with “the teeming, fruitful ...

A few years ago, in the interval of a Wigmore Hall concert, I dropped into the green room to say hello to a friend and found myself in the thick of a Cold War. Three members of the Artemis Quartet ...

I’m a member of an orchestra which just announced that our season will be suspended. I’ve been in this orchestra for 20 years, have a family here. I know other orchestras have gone through this, and ...

The Spanish authorities have identified the remains of composer María Luisa Manchado Torres in last week’s train disaster. Maria, who was 70, was on her way to attend a university symposium about her ...

The eminent Hungarian Ivan Fischer was due to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic in Mahler’s fifth symphony. Fischer, a popular figure in Berlin, asked for a change of seating in the orchestra, the ...

In July 2026, the violinist Sayaka Shoji recorded two works by Tōru Takemitsu with the pianist Stephen Kovacevich, who died this week aged 86. The album is due for release on Alpha Classics in January ...

The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra is launching the Thomas and Doris Ammann Prize for Young Conductors. The inaugural competition will take place in Lucerne from 24 to 27 June 2027. Fabio Luisi will chair ...