CATEGORIES

The 25 GREATEST BRITISH COMPOSERS of all time

We asked 167 top musicians to vote for the best composing talent to emerge from these fair isles over the centuries. Here are the results...

Rise of the machines?

Artificial Intelligence is suddenly everywhere, and its tentacles are stretching into the musical world. But there's no need to panic... at least not quite yet, says Tom Service

Gustav Mahler

Forthright and bold as Mahler's symphonies may appear, they are also works of remarkable subtlety and ambiguity

San Diego United States

Jeremy Pound enjoys the great outdoors as the sun sets to Debussy and Mahler at the southern Californian city's eye-catching new venue

Making Tracks

Composer, and Radio 3 presenter, Hannah Peel is forging a multi-faceted career while also giving crucial breaks to fellow musicians, as she tells Tom Stewart

Hidden treasures

After spending two decades searching the archives for neglected operas, conductor Charles Peebles recalls the risks and challenges of bringing them to the stage

The fight to be heard

Exiled from their homeland by the Taliban, Afghan musicians are striving to promote a rich musical heritage

A titan without ego

For many, conductor Otto Klemperer will be remembered as the steady and reliable champion of classic repertoire, but in his youth the German was a dashing advocate of the new

Eric Whitacre

It's not really the done thing to go into fan mode during an interview

Once a Prom a time...

From Horrible Histories to Doctor Who, Clare Stevens takes a whistlestop tour of children's Proms through the last 30 years

'I'm fine playing men on stage - and my private life is my private life'

The BBC Music Magazine Interview

Live choice

Paul Riley picks the month's best concert and opera highlights in the UK

Music that changed me

Simon Callow Actor

György Ligeti

Ivan Hewett traces the life and career of the great avant-garde composer and investigates what lies at the heart of his enigmatic genius

Sheffield UK

Claire Jackson visits the city's Chamber Music Festival where, at The Crucible, the click clack of snooker balls gives way to intimate harmony

Frenchmaster

Roger Nichols shares his personal recollections of the much esteemed yet reserved French composer Henri Dutilleux, who died ten years ago this month

Beethoven reframed

Gianandrea Noseda's new symphony cycle reevaluates the composer through the music of George Walker and the art of Mo Willems

From brush to bow

Close friends with leading musicians of his day, the great English painter Thomas Gainsborough was a keen player himself. Michael White visits Gainsborough's House in Suffolk to find out more

By Royal Invitation

As this year's big moment at Westminster Abbey approaches, Andrew Green meets some of the choristers who sang at the coronation of Elizabeth II back in 1953

Notes from childhood

As pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason releases a new album devoted to the music of youth, she speaks to Jessica Duchen about being a role model, her dedication to self-improvement and growing up in a famously musical family

Sergei Rachmaninov - All-Night Vigil (Vespers)

The composer's love of the music and rituals of the Orthodox Church were distilled in this masterpiece; Daniel Jaffé finds the best recording

Steve Reich

In developing a unique soundworld as he tackles fraught subjects, the American has proved hugely influential, says Claire Jackson

THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW - Kirill Gerstein

Mine wasn't the archetypal musician's tortured childhood, playing nothing but scales and etudes

RPS Music Awards 2023

Rebecca Franks meets the founders of Manchester Collective, winners of the Ensemble Award, to learn their recipe for success

Fair competitor gives Percy Grainger some Brigg ideas - APRIL 1905

His ringing voice - one of the loveliest I ever heard - was as fresh as a young man's... His effortless high notes, sturdy rhythms and clear unmistakable intervals were a sheer delight to hear.'

An orchestral odyssey

In the footsteps of Prokofiev and Britten, with assistance from a sprite and an A-list team, American composer Mason Bates has created a new audiovisual guide to the orchestra; he explains all to Tom Stewart

Call of the Nile

With its pharaohs, hieroglyphs, mummies and gods, Egypt has long fascinated composers, keen to capture its unique allure, says Claire Jackson

Compulsively driven

From the brick-counting Bruckner to Dvořák the avid trainspotter, Steve Wright introduces some of history's most obsessive composers

East meets west

For Steven Fox, music director of The Clarion Choir, Rachmaninov's anniversary year presents the perfect opportunity to celebrate the composer's often overlooked choral music, as he tells Charlotte Smith

The HUMAN TOUCH

As we celebrate Rachmaninov's 150th anniversary this month, Andrew Green talks with leading musicians who explain why there's so much more to a composer often derided as nostalgic and melancholic