The classical music world is marking the 150th anniversary of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius with concerts across Finland and in Australia too. But who was the man behind the music?
From Twinkle Twinkle to Space Odyssey and beyond, humans have always turned to music to help deal with the profoundly confronting enormity of the cosmos. Is that a match made in the heavens?
Like the medical profession, classical music is being forced publicly to confront an endemic culture of sexual harassment. Self-regulation has failed young musicians and action is long overdue.
After a very drawn out and fraught construction, the Philharmonie de Paris is finally open. The 2,400 seat concert hall was conceived with ambitious plans to democratise classical music, and is situated…
In any Opera History 101 course, Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) is cited as one of the most influential figures in the development of opera. And, of course, this is true. Gluck’s operas, and his…
Today, in a statement to his staff, ABC Managing Director Mark Scott said: ABC Radio plans to cut back on the number of concerts recorded on Classic FM. This is a prudent efficiency measure that still…
The urge to make new music is alive and well among young people in the UK, but not always using conventional instruments in the classroom or school orchestra. A new survey of music education has found…
What, one might wonder, is the value of an international festival of exploratory music? And why is it in Bendigo, in north-west Victoria? In Australia, we have so many festivals featuring music, film…
The past may be a foreign country, but in terms of war, they do not do things differently there; death is death at any time and in any language. No other work in the Classical repertoire could be more…
Peter Sculthorpe passed away at the age of 85 on Friday. As Australia’s best known composer of classical contemporary music, this gives us pause to reflect on the legacy of his music and also upon the…
The Royal Opera House’s restaging of La Bohème will get the same responses as any other production of the Puccini opera. The savvy enthusiast hedges cautiously, perhaps going with the sceptic’s play-it-safe…
Classical music means more than one thing and explanation is in order. Sometimes I make the distinction between big “C” and little “c”, but even that doesn’t fully solve it. The starting point is this…
Dr David Glowacki is a highly-respected research fellow of the Royal Society, and expert in non-equilibrium molecular reaction dynamics – no, me neither – but is also our newest, and arguably most unlikely…