The Guardian

A guide to Helmut Lachenmann’s music

Ever wondered what a beetle on its back sounds like? Try opening your ears to the virtuosity of Lachenmann’s music.

Jessica Duchen

My first night shift

Full marks to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment not just for magnificent playing but also for creative thinking; and for their willingness to experiment with the new, as well as resuscitating the old.

LA Times

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Diamond Jubilee royal tribute top charts

Andrew Lloyd Webber has another hit single — this time fit for a queen.

Arts Journal – Slipped Disc

Tel Aviv Wagner concert is cancelled again as hotel pulls down shutters

The ice-break Wagner concert that Tel Aviv University turned down after protests from Holocaust survivors has now been shut out by its substitute venue, the Tel Aviv Hilton Hotel.

Famous US orchestra may go part time

It was founded in 1959 as an economic alternative to the Big Beast Five and has flourished ever since as America’s only full-time chamber orchestra. But hard times have hit St Paul, Minnesota, and the orchestra needs to trim $1.5 million off next year’s budget.

Orchestra arrested at London Gatwick Airport

The opening concert of this year’s Spitalfields Festival almost had to be cancelled last night because of the over-zealous Border Agency officials at Gatwick, and possibly lax ones in Holland.

Gramophone

Jason Vieaux launches online Classical Guitar School

Guitarist Jason Vieaux launches an online Classical Guitar School on June 14, the first of its kind for the instrument.

The Times

A burst of opera takes library users by surprise

Standing on top of a carousel of large-print books, a lovestruck librarian is singing her heart out to her suitor, a gawky young fellow who for years has admired her from afar.

Musical suicide? The opera about a London bomb plot

By presenting Edward Rushton’s Babur in London the company seems determined to be not just provocative but incendiary.

(Written on June 12, 2012 )

Classical Music Magazine

Former Royal Academy of Music director jailed for £230,000 fraud

Janet Whitehouse, the former director of finance at the Royal Academy of Music who earlier this month pleaded guilty to charges of having defrauded the RAM of more than £230,000, was today sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment.

The Independent

Song of the suicided Bomber: How ‘Babur in London’ negotiated a cultural minefield

The daring new opera featuring British terrorists planning an attack is being staged next month.

Israeli orchestra strikes note of controversy with Wagner work

A seven-decade old cultural taboo will be broken next month when an Israeli symphony orchestra will play works by Richard Wagner inside the country for the first time since the state’s foundation in 1948.

The Guardian

Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra concert to be live-streamed

Sell-out Venezuela orchestra concert to be live-streamed on Guardian website on 23 and 26 June.

Arts Journal – Slipped disc

Orchestra goes looking for unpublished composers

Now here’s one they haven’t tried before. The Britten Sinfonia want to hear from composers – but only if they haven’t been published before.

Gramophone

Hear the score behind the final Olympic film

Composer Thomas Hewitt Jones captures the spirit of the Games.

(Written on May 31, 2012 )