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There's nothing like Ravel's Boléro: just two tunes, repeated throughout the orchestra, over and over again. It's a 15-minute piece 'without music in it', as Ravel himself said. There's no thematic development in Boléro, none of the conventional ways of making and sustaining a piece of orchestral music, even in the experimental decade of the 1920s.
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Look back in anguish
Despite Korngold's denials, there is much to suggest that his Symphony in F sharp is a grim depiction of the dark days of Nazism, argues Jessica Duchen
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Come again?
If something is worth hearing once it's worth hearing again, explains Rebecca Franks, who charts a history of the use of echoes in music
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THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Music by women and composers of colour is not a separate set of pieces from the ones we know
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A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works
Erik Levi enjoys Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends' eloquent performances of lesser-known works by exiled composers
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Pierre Boulez
Tom Stewart celebrates a composer, conductor and musical iconoclast for whom breaking from tradition was not an option but a must
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Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping
‘Fighting at a Schoenberg concert.
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Molto humoroso
Cartoonist and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung lampooned the world of classical music with splendid affection and wit, writes Andrew Green
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There and back again
With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...
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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples
Composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez prizes tempo, swing and bounce in her top rhythmic works
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Crystal clear with plenty of punch
The great is, they say, the enemy of the good, and that is certainly the case with David Sanger’s interpretation of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, which stands head and shoulders above a strong field of alternative versions.