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Sarah Connolly/Joseph Middleton: The World Feels Dusty album review – powerful narrations spanning Ella Fitzgerald to Emily Dickinson | Classical music | The Guardian
With sweeping, full colour piano Connolly and Middleton pay attention to every word, every harmonic shift in a performance of appealing immediacy
Tosca review – punchy new Puccini rises above the ‘Shame on you’ Russian soprano protests | Opera | The Guardian
Outrage over the casting of Anna Netrebko didn’t make it to the inside of the auditorium – where roars of approval greeted this high-stakes game of blood-spattered conflict directed by Oliver Mears
‘We have permission to be brave’: the women taking charge of crisis-hit Welsh National Opera | Welsh National Opera | The Guardian
Adele Thomas and Sarah Crabtree took up their positions as joint heads of WNO in January after brutal funding cuts. But they are confident their pared-down operation will still offer ‘an electric night out’
‘The cultural landscape is decimated’: Louise Alder on stage fright, arts funding and the Last Night of the Proms | Classical music | The Guardian
The great soprano will be the first British singer to top the bill at the Last Night in over a decade. So why does she advise her younger colleagues to leave the country?
‘He fondly called me his hash baby’: Mandy Sayer on her larger-than-life father – a lawbreaking jazz musician who couldn’t read or write | Books | The Guardian
Gerry Sayer was a warm, funny yet absent father, so consumed with music that he sacrificed family – but his ‘flair for improvisation’ inspired his writer daughter
Nielsen: Clarinet Concerto; Helios; Symphony No 5 album review – suavity and elegance from Gardner’s Bergen Phil | Classical music | The Guardian
The teeming textures of Nielsen’s 5th symphony are controlled with care and refinement by Edward Gardner, with the Bergen Philharmonic – and soloist Alessandro Carbonare – outstanding
As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one | Martin Kettle | The Guardian
The Russian soprano says she has condemned the war and has no affinity with this Kremlin. But hosting her still seems unwise, says Guardian columnist Martin Kettle
‘It’s a symbol of hope and defiance for Ume Sámi and its speakers’: singer Katarina Barruk on her Proms debut | Classical music | The Guardian
Joiking comes to the Proms this weekend in a collaboration between Katarina Barruk and violinist Pekka Kuusisto. The two tell us how they have enriched each other’s musical worlds
Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 album review – Mahan Esfahani’s reading is lucid and illuminating | Classical music | The Guardian
The harpsichordist describes Bach’s Preludes and Fugues as a ‘challenge and a homecoming’. His thoughtful new recording has a sense of the work’s drama but is never wilful nor perverse
‘We deny artists their voice at our peril’: when musicians like Anna Netrebko collide with politics | Opera | The Guardian
The arts and politics are bound to mix, but they are not the same thing. In the cold war, Soviet artists performed in the west. Should the Russian soprano, who has condemned the Ukraine invasion, be blocked from singing in London?
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/ Martín review – soloist and players gather strength after protesters disrupt Prom | Proms 2025 | The Guardian
A rattled Khatia Buniatishvili delayed her driven rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 to the second half of a Prom overshadowed by Palestine protests, yet the orchestra found buoyancy in Dvořák to lift the mood
Leipzig Gewandhaus/ Nelsons review – poignancy, poetry and powerful Sibelius in wide-ranging Prom | Proms 2025 | The Guardian
The venerable orchestra – among the world’s oldest – brought Pärt, Sibelius and Dvořák to the Proms. Isabelle Faust’s sensitive reading of the latter’s Violin Concerto was sleek and organic; the Sibelius well-paced and weighty
Royal Concertgebouw/Mäkelä review – Proms showcase legendary orchestra and its star signing | Proms 2025 | The Guardian
The masterly Amsterdam ensemble were at the Proms for two concerts with their Chief Conductor Designate Klaus Mäkelä. In works by Berio, Mahler, Mozart, Prokofiev and Bartók there was dazzling playing and immaculate attention to detail
‘I was a bit scared of success’: jazz-pop star Laufey on filling arenas, mansplainers, and confronting the haters | Music | The Guardian
With her retro blend of jazz-pop, the Icelandic artist seems an unlikely superstar. She discusses her surprising path to fame – and how much of her personal life she is willing to put into her music
BBCNOW/Bancroft/Grosvenor review – from the brilliantly bonkers to heavyweight Shostakovich | Proms | The Guardian
Sofia Gubaidulina’s Revue Music for Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band was an eccentric and joyful delight and Benjamin Grosvenor dazzled in Ravel’s bluesy Piano Concerto in this BBC National Orchestra of Wales prom
Beginner’s Gluck: how the 18th-century composer and a castrato changed opera forever | Opera | The Guardian
Over 250 years after Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice presented opera in a new way, an acrobatic staging aims to do the same. Iestyn Davies, whose Orpheus will be amid the tumblers, dancers and acrobats, writes of pushing boundaries – and heart-stopping wonder
Aurora Orchestra/Collon review – high impact and high intensity as Shostakovich’s fifth is brought to life | Classical music | The Guardian
A blistering performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony was preceded by a virtuosic and spectacular dramatic exploration the work that, however, could have had more bite
Why doesn’t the BBC blaze the glories of its orchestras year round, not just at the Proms? | Proms 2025 | The Guardian
The orchestras and choirs of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation are at the centre of Denmark’s cultural life. As its Symphony Orchestra comes to the Proms, what the BBC can learn from its European counterpart?