Instrument: Cimbalom

A trip down the Danube to old Budapest, with Iván Fischer taking the music of Brahms and Liszt back to their folk roots. 

A performance of John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary good enough to convert even the most conservative listener to the Church of New Music.

Thursday's opening of the Oslo Chamber Music Festival showed an enticing bredth of programming, showcasing a wide array of new and old music, all performed with utter conviction.

Playing repeatedly in my mind as I walked home on 24 July was the spine-chilling orchestral performance of the "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in the Franz Liszt Academy’s superb Solti Hall.

Composers have a long tradition of incorporating folk tunes into their music, and this evening’s concert by the National Youth Orchestra, with support from members of the folk group Bellowhead, really proved the point that musical genres are not separate boxes, but just points on a continuum, with no fixed boundaries.

Zwei facettenreiche Liederzyklen der Sängerin Hannigan machen den Abend zur berührenden Kurtág-Hommage