thu 12/06/2025

Classical Features

First Person: composer Conor Mitchell on challenging religious orthodoxy from a queer perspective in MASS

Conor Mitchell

A mass, in its simplest form, is the order of prayers that are said in a religious service. It is standardised and has been for centuries, in order to create a theatrical journey that takes us through a service. Composers have always been drawn to the mass as a structure because it has an inherent drama. It draws on themes of rebirth, change, redemption.

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Judith van Driel of the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam: 'the more we played Brahms, the more freedom we found'

Judith Van Driel

In every life there are moments of great significance. Experiences that stick with us and define our own personal story.

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'Everyone who played for him always gave their very best': remembering Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)

theartsdesk

Few musicians get to stage-manage a dignified departure from the world.

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First Person: ethnomusicologist Shumaila Hemani on global musical traditions and Concert for Afghanistan

Shumaila Hemani

In early 2020, the year that soon saw  COVID-19 lockdown, I served on the music faculty for Semester at Sea, Spring 2020 voyage, where I taught self-designed courses on global music cultures as well as a course called Soundscapes.

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First Person: pianist Filippo Gorini on head, heart and the contemporary in Bach's 'The Art of Fugue'

Filippo Gorini

A past work of art either still speaks to us in the present, or it is dead. To try and understand a masterpiece, we tend to look at its past: we study it, analyse it, read biographies of the artist behind it and chronicles of its historical background. But it is even more interesting to see what happened to the work after it was finished. What did it mean to the following generations, and, more critically, what does it mean to us today?

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Through hoops and hurdles to sheer joy: BBC Proms Director David Pickard on a season like no other

David Pickard

As anyone who has been trying to steer an arts organisation through the pandemic will tell you, the greatest challenge has been uncertainty; learning to live with the unknown and the unexpected.

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First Person: composer Joseph Phibbs on rescoring Britten

Joseph Phibbs

The music Britten composed in his twenties occupies a special place in his output. Even among his detractors there are some who begrudgingly concede that this early period is somehow different: fresher, more extroverted and daring, perhaps less driven by serving a purpose (or “being useful”, in the composer’s words).

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First Person: theartsdesk writer Bernard Hughes on composing for the BBC Proms

Bernard Hughes

For many years, first as a punter then latterly as a reviewer, I have sat in the section of the Royal Albert Hall stalls near stage right, under the BBC Radio broadcast box, knowing that that is where they sit the composers being premiered at the Proms.

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First Person: young musicians Brooke Simpson and Erin Black on the National Youth Orchestra's 'Hope Exchange' project

Brooke Simpson

The National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain’s Hope Exchange is an explosive return to the concert platform for hundreds of teenagers like us, playing a variety of new pieces, with the preparation beginning in hundreds of primary schools across the country.

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First Person: Héloïse Werner on a live collaboration with fellow composers and performers

Héloïse Werner

It’s not every day that you have the opportunity to perform with musicians like the ones I’ll be sharing the St John’s Smith Square stage with on Saturday 3 July; organist Kit Downes and cellist Colin Alexander are some of the best musicians I know. I say “share the stage”, but that’s not technically correct.

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