Cloudstreet review – opera version of Tim Winton’s classic revels in Australianisms

Compressing the 427-page tome into a three-hour opera reduces moments of poignancy into mere oddities but a slower second act offers better immersion

Tim Berne/Steve Byram: Spare review – torrential collision of music and images

Tim Berne’s avant-jazz – a sound like a roomful of simultaneous conversations – fuses a funky rootsiness, the speediness of postbop and intricate compositional designs that often have more in common with contemporary-classical music. The New York saxophonist/composer has wryly … Continue reading →

Rufus Wainwright review – puckish performance of Shakespeare’s sonnets

Wainwright’s high-risk labour of love pays off as he corrals opera stars, actors and Florence Welch into luscious arrangements of the Bard’s classic poems

Blindspot by Vijay Iyer and Teju Cole review – evoking an ugly America

The Met is hosting composer Vijay Iyer and collaborators in its new space – and on Sunday, as the audience discussed the violence at the Trump rally, his work with writer Teju Cole seemed to sum up the fearful mood

Nothing review – gospel of teen nihilism is finely executed

This adaptation of Janne Teller’s dark novel by David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell shows that Glyndebourne’s education wing leads the field

Boys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon review – Bond, Warren Beatty and the ‘Beast’

The You’re So Vain singer’s fabulous memoir lays bare her love life and her depressive streak

A Christmas Carol review – solo opera wrings heroic acrobatics from Mark le Brocq

Iain Bell’s operatic treatment of the Dickens fable at WNO brings a frenetic series of mini-cameos, with a festive dressing of contemporary politics

How Heinrich Schütz captured the true spirit of Christmas

Schütz’s nativity music, written in the wake of the thirty years’ war, resonates with a sense of hope for today

The Rake’s Progress review – a rare treat from the Met

The opera’s champion, conductor James Levine, led the orchestra through Stravinsky’s many-layered score to thrilling effect

Words Without Music review – Philip Glass’s deft, quietly witty memoir

From postwar childhood to hippy trail, New York taxi driver to cult composer, Philip Glass is a man on a musical mission

Atthis review – Sappho’s passions in a subtle song cycle

Georg Friedrich Haas’s 2009 work, sung with authority by Claire Booth, describes the unstable trajectory of the poet’s relationship with a younger woman

The Pied Piper of Hamelin review – Matthews’s tale is beautifully judged

Colin Matthews’s setting of Michael Morpurgo’s Pied Piper retelling was done full justice by the LPO and choir of Deansfield primary school, writes Erica Jeal

Julian Cope review – from ripping yarns to ragged pop

Drug-fuelled epiphanies and enduring melodies abound in the psychedelic raconteur’s career retrospective, writes Dave Simpson

In the Wake of Neil Gunn review – Vass has a great ear for atmosphere

Mike Vass’s musical rebooting of Neil Gunn’s 1937 Western Isles travelogue was most striking when he kept it uncluttered, writes Kate Molleson

LSO/Noseda review – pungent immediacy in Beamish’s wartime debut

Sally Beamish’s Equal Voices, on the effects of war, had its first outing, while Nelson Freire delivered a startling Emperor Concerto, writes Andrew Clements