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Star organist, conductor and broadcaster Anna Lapwood is our guest curator, presenting her top ten – for today – favourites works for her instrument. 

Our latest changes to the video search indicate paid-vs-free listings and give you new ways of narrowing down your search and sorting the results.

One of our greatest operatic basses tells us about his projects during lockdown, including the revelation of hidden non-musical talents...

Audiences are telling us now is not the time to be dark. We should listen to them.

The loss of revenue from ticket sales and touring has put most British orchestras into a parlous financial situation. The Director of the ABO discusses what has been done and what is needed.

Bachtrack’s operations will be reduced while the Covid-19 pandemic persists. Founders David and Alison Karlin explain what’s happening.

For Romantics Month, Jan Lisiecki shares his thoughts on Frédéric Chopin and what makes his piano writing so unique. 

Richard Stokes, Professor of Lieder at the Royal Academy of Music, explores Heine's ambivalent approach to romanticism.

Viscount Organs team, after much discussion, have managed to agree on their favourite organ pieces to celebrate Keyboard Month at Bachtrack.

Contemporary harpsichordist Goska Isphording on the hidden potentialities of this historic instrument.

In the Beethoven 250 anniversary year, Austrian legend Rudolf Buchbinder takes the cycle of five piano concertos to many cities and orchestras. Here, he explains why Beethoven is the centre of his musical thinking. 

As the Belcea Quartet launches its complete cycles of Beethoven's string quartets in Paris, London and Berlin, viola player Krzysztof Chorzelski reflects on the challenges in revisiting these great scores. 

We spoke to countertenor Max Emanuel Cenčić ahead of his performance of Handel’s opera Orlando at the Barokkfest Trondheim.

We talk to the director about the sparkling world of operetta and how exhausting yet rewarding it is to bring this genre to the stage.

Famous violist, composer and lover of the viola d'amore Garth Knox shares his passion for this mysterious instrument, able to play Marin Marais and Olga Neuwirth, Janáček's Second Quartet and Irish folk music.

The juror of the singing competition Neue Stimmen gives an insight on how to find the opera star of tomorrow.

Choral director and singer Phil Wilcox shares his insight on choral singing, directing and the importance of communicating with the audience.

For anyone considering joining a choir or who wants to improve their singing, choral director and singer Phil Wilcox shares his tips for what can make a big difference.

The American conductor explains how he fell in love with Berlioz and how he's commemorating the 150th anniversary of his death in the grandest possible way. 

Michael Spyres explores the history behind Berlioz' great tenor roles and recounts his experiences performing Faust, Benvenuto Cellini and Énée. 

Antoine Tamestit reflects on a much misunderstood work, initially rejected by Niccolò Paganini, and how he learnt to breathe life into the role of Byron's "Childe Harold".

Sir Roger Norrington explores the history of “the first truly Romantic score in history” and recounts his experiences performing it. 

The words come first: Mark Wigglesworth, former Music Director of English National Opera, puts the case for singing opera in English.

With his Winter Journey, the English baritone overcomes language barriers to help the audience convey meaning through words and music.

Verdi wrote some terrific "larger than life" roles for mezzo-sopranos. Jamie Barton picks her favourite singers for her "top ten" playlist. 

Handel lived in London for most of his adult life, becoming the leading musical figure in the city. Handel expert Katharine Hogg traces his steps through today's London.

Bachtrack is delighted to welcome Mark Pullinger as Classical Music Editor, starting on February 17th. Mark joins us from Opera Britannia, where he has been editor since 2011. He comes with an unbounded enthusiasm for classical music and opera and brings us a wealth of experience in reviewing music, interviewing musicians and publishing.

Read our review of Giancarlo del Monaco's production of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Edward Benjamin Britten was born on 22nd November 1913, which happens to be the day of St Cecilia (patron saint of all musicians), in Lowestoft, Suffolk. In his early years, the sounds of the sea and the First World War surrounded him and became his earliest influences, and his mother holding concerts at the house meant Britten was constantly exposed to the “big names” of the industry.

Forget the Concert Hall… Orchestral music now has an exciting new venue! On the 30th June and 1st July the stunning Glastonbury Abbey was host to the latest Festival to hit Somerset – Orchestra In A Field. With numerous outstanding performances that were perfectly suited to all ages and musical tastes, this was a weekend not to be missed.

On Saturday 30th June I went to the Orchestra in a Field at Glastonbury Abbey. By the time I arrived Charles Hazelwood’s Excellent Device!, his symphony orchestra, were on the main stage rehearsing for their performance in the evening. I went to explore the variety of tents around the edge of the field.

This evening I was graced with the opportunity of attending my first opera and having thoroughly enjoyed the grand spectacle of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, I hope that this premier event will lead on to many more of the sort.

The Festival Theatre last Saturday was not the city-centre theatre we know it to be, but rather it was transformed into a German forest full of austere gingerbread men, frightened children and a witch reminiscent in terms of looks to Madame de Pompadour; not your average night in Edinburgh then! The most striking aspect of the opera was the translation.

We got a lot of interest last January when we published our Concert and Opera League Tables for 2010, so we thought we'd do it again for 2011. It's fascinating to see how a great deal is constant from year to year, with the biggest visible differences due to which composers have anniversaries.

This season being the last season of a Stèphane Denève fronted RSNO one could tell that after a hugely successful 7 year partnership they were going to go out with a bang and Friday’s concert certainly lived up to such expectations.

The concert started off with Beethoven’s Fidelio Overture. This great piece of music was played brilliantly by the Brighton Philharmonic, with lots of charismatic energy and colour. The fast, lively passages of violin runs in particular were perfectly performed, with outstanding accuracy and technical ability.

The concert I went to see was ‘Drumming’ composed by ‘Steve Reich’ and performed by ‘The Colin Currie Percussion Group’. It was most definitely not what I was expecting but it was a pleasant surprise and I learnt a completely new style of composing using percussion and rhythm as the main focus of the piece.

This was the first time I visited Kings Place and it truly lived up to its reputation. It was fabulous! Because we arrived half an hour early I got to sit down and enjoy the view of the canal outside and the sculptures inside. As we went down the escalators to arrive at Hall One where the concert was being held we passed the gallery floor.

I love the cello. Ever since starting to learn the violin I’ve loved the cello! And the first piece of the night, Richard Strauss’ “Dreaming by the Fireside” started with a gorgeous cello tune. It was a perfect celebration of all things stringy. A beautiful opener which set the scene for the rest of the concert; It was short and pretty.

The ongoing London Handel Festival celebrated the brief tenure of Handel at James Brydges’s (the soon-to-be Duke of Chandos) palatial mansion of Cannons with a daytime educational event at the North London Collegiate School (who occupy a later building on the site of Cannons, nowadays spelt Canons) and an evening concert at the nearby glorious Baroque gem of St Lawrence Whitchurch (rebuilt by Bryd

The Royal Opera announced its 2011-12 season yesterday. The season has an unusual profile: there is a large clutch of interesting work that's not heard all that often, a large clutch of old faithfuls, and not all that much in the middle.

On Saturday, April 2, 2011 I attended my first professional orchestra concert and my ears were very pleased. I sat next to my dad with anticipation not really sure what to expect. I chose this particular concert because I have some interest in playing the piano although I currently play the trombone.

Having been to Covent Garden a lot recently, I can't help but be struck by the variety of music you get in the space of a few hundred metres. In order, from Monday's visit to Fidelio: The saxophonist in the busking patch at Leicester Square tube playing a mean version of Django Reinhardt's Minor Swing. Guilt at not having any change to give him.

I went to the concert a little early so as to listen to the 30 minute talk on the pieces and composers in the concert. There was a lot of good information and some humour. The person taking the talk was one of the viola players. He would explain something about the music or a composer’s style and then back it up with evidence from a CD which had recordings of the music.

The concert I went to was the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture, Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto, and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at Brighton Dome, conducted by Danail Rachev, with pianist Sofya Gulyak as the soloist for the Rachmaninov.

This was my first visit to Kings Place, a new building near King’s Cross Station (which also includes the offices of the Guardian and Observer newspapers), so I was fairly excited! I arrived wondering what it would be like and was pleasantly surprised.

A current fashion in opera productions is to use a stage that's mostly dark, with spotlights giving brilliant splashes of light for those characters or features to which the director wishes to draw your attention.

Here is a spreadsheet with the raw data from the 2010 league tables. Please see the copyright notice included in the file for permissions: use this data at your own risk, and if you publish anything based on it, we ask you to attribute the source. The data is in a single table, allowing you to do your own summaries.

This was my first visit to a percussion only concert and even though I play percussion in a youth orchestra I was a little apprehensive.

Since Bachtrack maintains a highly structured database of many thousands of classical music and opera performances across the world, we're in a unique position to show you some statistics about what gets performed. Following on from my blog about the top composers, I've taken a deep dive into our statistics for 2010: here are the results.