Music and Opera

The two Proms concerts given on consecutive evenings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra were well planned: a short opening work, and after the interval a long and demanding symphony. Moreover, the big symphonies were by Bruckner and Mahler, to the latter of whom this orchestra has been devoted almost since its foundation. Willem Mengelberg, the orchestra’s chief for 50 years, was the only conductor, Mahler said, that he could trust with his works, and the orchestra has been headed by a succession of distinguished Mahlerians ever since.Bruckner, meanwhile, entered the orchestra’s repertoire in a major way in the 1950s, and has been there ever since. Daniele Gatti, who became the

Schoenberg began Gurrelieder in 1900, but he didn’t hear it until 1913. By then, he’d moved on, and he ostentatiously refused to acknowledge the applause for what (as it turned out) would be the greatest public triumph of his career. Radical artist snubs ignorant masses: it’s a gesture that could stand for much of classical music’s post-1913 history. Even today, you won’t get far into a discussion with contemporary music buffs before someone declares that concertgoers need to be ‘educated’. Which always reminds me of a friend’s account of the night at Reading when Guns N’ Roses decided to play new material instead of the hits that the audience felt

Back in the period-instrument wars of the 1980s and ’90s, when the forces of historically informed performance smashed out of their baroque beachhead and started to annex romantic repertoire, the insurgents split into two factions. Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players were the shock troops: their Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, with its filthy, rasping ophicleide, exploded like a tactical nuke. John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique went in later as peacekeepers, altogether smoother and more reassuring. Norrington’s discs started arguments; Gardiner’s won awards. As an A-level music student drunk on the hot-blooded idealism of Berlioz’s Memoirs, I was certain which one the composer would have preferred. Well,

Two songs in which Sir Michael informs us that he is distressed by both Brexit and Donald Trump. Released with, according to the 70-year-old singer, ‘urgency’: he can see that we are in trouble and was naturally anxious to help us out. The first, ‘England Lost’, is at least redeemed by a soupçon of wit. Jagger explains that he went to see England play football but that they lost, and he got wet in the rain. But it then turns into a sort of state of the nation thing, by the simple addition of an apostrophe and the letter ‘s’. England’s lost, he bemoans, and chucks in an incoherent allusion

Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band I’ve ever heard. Every July they come to the same French village for a one-off appearance and every year they play exactly the same set of rock classics. Young and old turn out to sing along and groove under the plane trees in the village square. The village rock concert is Catriona’s social event of the year. She starts looking forward to it around Christmas. Every year, she pushes her way to the front and dances for two hours, and every year the village postman makes a move on her.

When you first encounter it, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis can sound like the Ninth Symphony with more singing but no tunes. But the more I listen to it, the more I agree with the composer that it’s his greatest work — or, at least, up there with the last two piano sonatas and his String Quartet Op. 131, my other nominees. Despite its titanic scale, the Missa solemnis inhabits their intimate sound world: it is built from the harmonically ambiguous motifs of Beethoven’s ‘third style’. Nothing in it is as catchy as the ‘Ode to Joy’. On the other hand, nothing in the Ninth reaches the spiritual stratosphere of the Benedictus,

The most compelling pop singers in music right now — at least in the branch where pop singers still play guitars — were on stage last week. The 1975, fronted by Matty Healy, finished the tour in support of their second album, a US and UK number one, with a headline show at the Latitude festival, the chosen spot for recreational drug-taking by kids who have just finished their GCSEs. Ezra Furman played his most prestigious London show yet, appearing at the Barbican as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of his label, Bella Union. Healy and Furman are very different — the one a genuine popstar, the other off

Grade: B – All criticism is pointless, I suppose, given the sheer magnitude of the Shawn Corey Carter machine — his billions of dollars, his millions of sales, his ubiquity. This is the rapper even whitey can git down to, big pal of the Obamas, bad-ass Bedford-Stuyvesant gangsta made good. But even when Jay-Z and the genre have been comprehensively subsumed by the mainstream, there is still stuff about it that grates. Not the familiar homophobia or the championing of criminality. Not even the misogyny — hell, if it’s misogyny you’re after, check out The Eagles. Crackers do misogyny just as vigorously. It’s the relentless, self-obsessed, cock-clutching braggadocio — and,

Boy is she fat, and getting fatter. I realise this is something we’re not meant to mention when talking about Beth — but it’s kinda the elephant in the room. Literally. And I worry about the lass. These days she makes Mama Cass look like Edie Sedgwick. Of course, we should accept her as she is — a lesbian-identifying, very hefty babe from good ol’ down-home Ar-kin-saw. Her difference, then, is part of the schtick, breaking the mould, etc. — and that’s just fine and (Jim) dandy, providing something palpably ‘different’ actually emanates from the stuff she does. That the proud revelling in difference is not merely a cosmetic exercise

As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their requirements for car transportation while on tour, necessitated by ‘rather bad driving experiences in the recent past in various parts of the world’. Kraftwerk, it said, should only be driven by ‘suave gear changers (if car is not automatic)’ and ‘suave breakers’. Both radio and aircon should be turned off, and on no account should the driver talk to the band. It had the effect of making the Düsseldorf quartet — long since down to one original member, Ralf Hütter — look like grumpy old men who would rather be

When friends from overseas with the slightest interest in music ask for recommendations about what to see in London, I always come up trumps. Boastful but true. In fact, even friends who’ve lived in London all their lives are impressed when I suggest a night of opera at the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre. Normally, that’s because they’ve never heard of it, never mind not knowing where it is or what it does. And what it does is the key. For this is the stage upon which some of the best young singers in the world prepare for stellar operatic careers, and it’s where you and I can listen