The opening gestures of Mahler's Symphony No. 9 unfold with a striking sense of hesitation, often interpreted as reflecting the composer’s preoccupation with physical fragility and mortality. From ...

Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler symphony cycle with the Czech Phil is meticulous, imaginative and deserves to be placed alongside the very best sets Semyon Bychkov’s Czech Philharmonic Mahler cycle has been ...

The four monumental bas-reliefs of a woman’s back that Henri Matisse finished between 1909 and 1930 are among the most enigmatic sculptures of the 20th century.

Listeners will have their own pantheon of classic Mahler Ninth recordings but here is one that demands to be heard. Why then has it taken so long to reach us? Unsubdued coughs threatened to mask its ...

December 2, 1899: Born in Holborn, London. Baptized Giovanni Battista. His father, Lorenzo, was Italian. His mother, Louise Marie, was French, born in Arcachon near the Pyrenees. His father and ...

Please note: Mark Wigglesworth has had to withdraw from this concert for personal reasons. However, we are delighted that Yoel Gamzou has agreed to step in to conduct the Orchestra. As a result of ...

Mahler would probably have been amazed to discover just how much importance his Ninth Symphony, a work he never even heard, has come to bear not just in an assessment of his own work but, increasingly ...

Ivor Cutler called silence the music of the cognoscenti. But there’s silence and there’s silence, and a regular concertgoer hears a fair bit of both. The ability to fold silence into a musical line – ...

Sometimes as a reviewer it’s hard to maintain an air of critical detachment. This once in a lifetime concert was one of those occasions, so it’s not an easy task to summon up the words needed to ...