Music, Classical

A History of Classical Music: Part 1 - Introduction

Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist

Do you like the odd piece of classical music, but you also feel like you can't tell one composer from another, and you don't know who wrote your favourite bits, and you're finding it all it a bit intimidating, but you'd like to know more? We can…

Programme for the Edinburgh International Festival 2013 puts artists and technology centre-stage

Tod Machover, the Wooster Group and Oper Frankfurt among the EIF programme highlights

A crowd sourced orchestral work by boundary breaker Tod Machover is just one of the many highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Festival programme. Set over three weeks this August, the EIF’s line-up includes an homage to Allen Ginsberg with…

A History of Classical Music: Part 4 - The Later Renaissance

Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist

Welcome back. We left off in the mid-16th century, and for quite a while yet, the vast bulk of music that gets written down is church music. And you know what that means, right? ... More unaccompanied choral singing? Yes! And lucky you, because…

Cottier Chamber Project features some of Scotland’s favourite chamber ensembles

Pavel Haas Quartet, Daniel’s Beard and Red Note Ensemble among programme highlights

Sometimes described as ‘the music of friends’, chamber music usually brings to mind small scale and intimate. No doubt that’s the case with individual performances in this year’s Cottier Chamber Project, but otherwise we’re talking big. Now in its third…

A History of Classical Music: Part 3 - The Early Renaissance

Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist

The Renaissance. Right. Remind me again? The European Renaissance! The remarkable flowering of humanist culture that happened between the 14th and 16th centuries! Oil paintings that look like the real thing! Great writing that's not in Latin!

A Little Book of Monsters promises 'good, honest, wicked, disrespectful attitude'

The family concert will also feature excerpts from Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes

‘I thought he was the funniest man I’d ever met,’ recalls composer Stephen Deazley of the first time he was introduced to writer Matt Harvey. Deazley later found himself laughing out loud to Harvey’s poetry, attracting some odd looks in an Edinburgh…

Hot 100 2012: 69-60

Rachel Sermanni, Limmy and Peter Capaldi among Scotland's hottest cultural contributors in 2012

The Hot 100 is our list of Scotland’s 100 hottest individuals and groups who’ve made a splash this year, from comic book writers to comedians, artists to actors. If they've contributed to Scotland's cultural landscape in 2012, you'll find them here.

A History of Classical Music: Part 2 - Really Early Music

Alex Johnston's series of articles outlining the history of classical music - with Spotify playlist

People have been making music as long as there's been people. The earliest musical instruments we have appear to be bone flutes, around 40,000 years old, found in Germany and Slovenia. The earliest composer whose name we know was from Ur, in what's now…

Benjamin Britten to be the focus of the next Children's Classic Concert

Owen and Olly are reworking the British composer's Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra

Had he not checked out a little prematurely in 1976, Benjamin Britten would have been 100 this year. Birthday celebrations are taking place across the UK, but Children’s Classic Concerts’ Britten and Beyond is the only family event dedicated to one of…

Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite discusses upcoming Aidan Moffat collaboration as part of Tectonics

The duo will be joined by Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir as part of the experimental mini-fest

I’m too good at saying yes to things,’ jokes Stuart Braithwaite, when asked if he isn’t a little bit daunted by the prospect of taking part in a largely improvised performance, featuring a collaborator he’s yet to meet, before an audience perhaps not…

Composer Ilan Volkov presents the orchestral/experimental Tectonics Festival

The festival's opening concert features works by Frank Denyer, David Fennessy and Charles Ross

For many, the idea of ‘orchestral music’ will bring to mind only the great classical symphonists like Mozart and Beethoven, or those who came along a little later, maybe Dvorak, Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich. Taking a completely different look at…

New Scottish Opera production of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman

Opera relocated to Wagner's origianllocation of Scotland’s North East

If he hadn’t had such a keen eye for nifty marketing, Richard Wagner’s opera The Flying Dutchman could have put Scotland as firmly on the geographic opera map as Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Both operas date from 1839, a time when Gothic…

Minimal: Steve Reich in Glasgow - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Sat 8 Mar 2013

Programme includes Radio Rewrite and older pieces mixes beauty with technical

This celebration of a modern icon doesn’t start well, with an IT failure causing a sizeable delay, during which the crowd perform a spontaneous, good-natured crowd version of Reich’s ‘Clapping Music’. Once things get going, the first…

The Colin Currie Group: Steve Reich – Drumming

The Proms percussion group will perform the composer's piece as part of Minimal: Reich in Glasgow

Billed recently by the New York Times as ‘our greatest living composer’, Steve Reich is one of the most influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. An artist who breaks down genre-specific music boundaries, Reich is the subject of Minimal…

Auricle Ensemble to give live airing to Aaron Copland's score for The City

The piece was created as a soundtrack to Lewis Mumford's 1939 documentary of the same name

As New England rural idyll gives way to polluted, disease-ridden urban city life, with fumes and traffic everywhere, Aaron Copland’s score for The City is wonderfully evocative of the images portrayed on the big screen. When first seen, it wasn’t just…

Actress Maureen Beattie discusses her part in the RSNO Christmas Concert

The kid-friendly classical performance will feature Raymond Brigg's The Snowman, narrated by Beattie

Maureen Beattie is no stranger to Christmas entertainment. Although best known for her spell in Casualty, the Scottish actress has trod many a board during the festive season, much like her father – comedian and actor, Johnny Beattie – before her. So…

Christmas concerts across Scotland in 2012

Carol concerts, choir recitals and Handel's Messiah

Christmas isn’t Christmas without carols. And, of course, The Messiah. That’s certainly what the evidence of this month’s listings would suggest. Carols by candlelight, carols for charity, carols with brass, orchestra, organ, carols for male choirs…

The Intoxicating Rose Garden: a performance adaptation of Persian poet Hafez

Laurie Irvine, Jila Peacock, Michael Popper and Red Note Ensemble to perform score by Sally Beamish

Even the name of Sally Beamish’s latest score is something that sounds out of the ordinary. Delve further into what The Intoxicating Rose Garden is all about, and it’s clear that it is a new piece of work which is quite different from anything even the…

Scottish Opera: The Magic Flute - Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Fri 19 Oct 2012

Industrial-themes production brings fun and vitality to Mozart’s well-loved score

First seen in 1791, in the latter years of the Age of Enlightenment, there is much in Scottish Opera’s new production of Mozart’s Magic Flute that brings its influence to mind. Right from the orchestral overture there is a sense of the excitement of new…

Glasgow's Minimal initiative to celebrate Estonian composer Arvo Pärt

Part's Stabat Mater and Passio will be conducted by Paul Hillier

Now entering its third year, Glasgow Music’s groundbreaking Minimal initiative brings a weekend of music by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt to City Halls and Kelvingrove. His Stabat Mater will be heard one night, with Passio, a setting of the St John…

Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde: Act I - Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Sun 30 Sep

The SSO bring intense depth and exquisite insight to Wagner’s tremendous score

Kicking off their 2012/13 season with an all-star concert performance of the first act of one of the world’s most celebrated operas, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra once again proved themselves to be amongst the UK’s leading orchestras. Featuring…

Distant Worlds aims to bring the music of the Final Fantasy video games to Edinburgh's Playhouse

Strings stir, cymbals clash as before us an epic battle unfolds as good once again fights the forces of evil. This isn’t an opera or a big budget movie but a scene from Final Fantasy, one of the longest running and most respected RPG videogame series.

Oliver Cox of Owen & Olly discusses Children's Classic Concerts: Mission Impossible?

There can be few sounds more chilling than the opening bars of Jaws. Instantly recognisable no matter what context you hear them in, within seconds images of shark fins push all other thoughts aside. So it’s no surprise to find that John Williams…

New BBC SSO airing of Tristan and Isolde to be conducted by Donald Runnicles

The Edinburgh born conductor will be joined by Matthew Best, Nina Stemme and Nicky Spence

In Edinburgh born Donald Runnicles, Scotland is extremely fortunate to have one of the world’s finest Wagnerian conductors as a prime mover in the country’s musical midsts. Featuring the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, of which he is Chief Conductor…

Lammermuir Festival 2012 highlights include magnificent spectacle at Tantallon Castle

East Lothian will come alive with the sound of music this September

Lammermuir Festival promotes ‘Beautiful Music in Beautiful Places ’where classical music can be heard in striking and often unexpected places. As part of the Year of Creative Scotland, a unique and spectacular light and music performance will bring…