The breadth and success of David Byrne’s recent curatorship of Southbank Centre’s Meltdown Festival demonstrate how the curiosity and...

The Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga discusses the fierce competition in today’s music world, how students should spend less time online and...

A recent performance of the whole of Homer’s epic Iliad offered an opportunity to observe actors close up and to understand what their...

Great stage actors have an aura of positive energy and openness that musicians can access, too. Acting coach Patsy Rodenburg tells Ariane...

The British composer John Woolrich discusses the challenges contemporary music faces and the vital role of amateur musicians My interview...

The jury of the Pierre Fournier Award hands out no main prize but two Incentive Grants in the prestigious cello contest at Wigmore Hall...

Perfectionism in music is a modern scourge, and Peter Cropper, who died in May, demonstrated that it is a distracting priority for...

As some of the world's finest violin makers gather in the small university town of Oberlin, Ohio, to share their knowledge at the annual...

The best musicians have special powers of listening, as pianist András Schiff demonstrated in a masterclass last week How can you tell if...

As the Tchaikovsky Competition kicks off, we revisit a 2014 interview with the great Irish pianist Barry Douglas, who won the contest in...

W.B. Yeats was born 150 years ago, on 13 June, 1865. Here's his poem The Fiddler of Dooney, written in 1889, when he was 24, celebrating...

The Elbow Music social media campaign puts modern instruments in the spotlight My recent article about Frank Peter Zimmermann’s dilemma...

The great British writer Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June, 1840. His father was a fiddler in the village band and he himself also played....

How much can an adult amateur expect to develop as a musician in a short space of time? Quite a lot, it turns out, given the right...

The great violinist, former leader of the Lindsay Quartet, and one of the unique and most charismatic voices in chamber music, died on...

Jury places audience favourite in fifth place at Queen Elisabeth Violin Competition in Belgium Music competitions get a lot of bad press...

A new collection of specially commissioned unantiqued instruments offers hope of a new Zeitgeist around modern violins. Will top soloists...

David Byrne turns 63 today, and yet he still has one of the most energetic and interesting careers of any musician anywhere in the world....

Valery Gergiev was optimistic about the rise of Asian musicians but sounded a note of caution about the pressure on young competition...

Observing masterclasses can be a brilliant way to learn and find inspiration, and yet students rarely turn up to watch. They may be too...