Classical Music

If Apple wanted to offer exclusive music, they would cut a deal with Taylor Swift. They have the cash to do it. They wouldn’t waste time on locking up Kalevi Aho. That’s so obvious I shouldn’t even have to say it, but (given all the smoke and mirrors here), I really do.

So we’re clearly dealing with the bad Apple here. And the fact that the company... See more

In this context, Kaija Saariaho’s very last musical work, a concerto for trumpet and orchestra under the title of HUSH (2022-23), stands apart as something knowingly conceived as finale – both in personal and professional terms – winding up (as far as such action is humanely conceivable) a cycle of solo concerti, an œuvre, a life.

One of the reasons we haven’t heard much about Pejačević until recently is because of her untimely death at the age of thirty-eight, just a month after giving birth to her only child. Given medical provision in the 1920s, it was always a risk for a woman to be pregnant in her late thirties. Perhaps with this in mind, Pejačević wrote a poignant lett... See more

An ideal production of Freitag aus Licht would not be afraid to actively undermine the ideologies that underpin Stockhausen’s aesthetic vision. It would not shy away from denouncing and Evan ridiculing the composer and his nauseating beliefs. It would acknowledge and actively decry the opera’s racism while transforming its message from one of oppre... See more

Di rigori armato il seno (‘With my breast armed with severity’—these words were lifted in their entirety by Strauss from the concluding ballet of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Molière, 1670) for which Lully wrote the music).