Man, 88, passes grade 8 piano with distinction, 67 years after taking grade 7
Ray Eveleigh says playing helps keep his brain active and wife and daughter encouraged him to go for grade 8
The 10 best global albums of 2024
DJ Love celebrated car horns, Kenyan metalhead Lord Spikeheart traversed trap and doom, while 82-year-old Milton Nascimento joined forces with Esperanza Spalding
La Rondine review – Pappano and the LSO make Puccini glitter
The London Symphony Orchestra’s concert performance under their chief conductor made a compelling case for Puccini’s little-performed opera
A moment that changed me: I was loving life as a cellist – then something snapped in my arm
As a teenager with a scholarship to a prestigious music school, I was looking forward to a future playing Dvořák, Shostakovich and Elgar. Then came the injury that shattered my dreams
Nikolai Lugansky review – lots of notes, lots of noise, but precious little poetry
However brilliantly he negotiates extreme technical challenges, the pianist’s maximum-velocity playing remains oddly monochrome
Concerto Italiano/Alessandrini review – purity and expressiveness as natural as breathing
Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonRinaldo Alessandrini and his six superlative vocalists celebrated their 40th anniversary with a return to Monteverdi – the composer with whom they first established their reputation
Kapr Code review – operatic retelling of composer Jan Kapr’s turbulent life
Lucie Králová’s daring documentary uses a choir and an original libretto to recount the story of the renegade Czech musician
BBCNOW/Paterson/Wills review – from Joyce’s muse to Point Reyes’s whirling birds
Simon Wills’s new concertante ballet, premiered here, proved engaging but too discursive in a concert that also featured Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails and Ives’ first symphony
Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie album review – Yuja Wang’s solo piano dazzles
Wang brings her characteristic brilliance to the obbligato line of Messaien’s symphony, part of a whole that, under Nelsons and the Boston Symphony, doesn’t fully convince
Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah review – hallelujah! A fresh take on the composer’s much-loved work
By revealing the murky circumstances in which it was created, Charles King’s fascinating history of the oratorio shows it in a new light
The week in classical: Opera triple bill: Britten, Weill and Ravel; Hänsel und Gretel; Tosca – review
Two opera studio shows find the next generation of stars in rude health, while the Royal Opera’s latest Tosca revival is the ultimate class act
Cappella Mariana, Constantinople: Pilgrimage review – Kryštof Harant’s 1600 adventure reimagined
The Czech nobleman and composer’s journey from Bohemia to Jerusalem is the inspiration for this rewarding cross-cultural album
György Pauk obituary
Consummate Hungarian violinist who was a distinguished interpreter of the music of his compatriot Béla Bartók
LSO/Volkov review – Lachenmann’s My Melodies offers eerie mutterings, brutal force and unpitched sounds
The work is immensely taxing for orchestra and audience alike but was performed with precision and virtuosity, while, in the second half, a lean and lithe Beethoven’s Seventh made for a gracious companion piece
Schubert, Ter Schiphorst, Andre album review – something old, something new
Alongside a rather brittle Death and the Maiden, contemporary composers Iris ter Schiphorst adds a recorder to a string quartet while Marc Andre’s miniatures study textures