A versatile talent who turned his back on glamour to embrace music for its own sake

‘Enfant terrible’ who became a prolific member of the UK’s classical music establishment

Champion of the avant-garde who stamped his image on the musical life of the second half of the 20th century

Beautifully performed Britten easily eclipsed a jarring mash-up of Dufay and Heider

Recording documents how Georg Solti invests the music with the intensity and drive that became his hallmark as a conductor

Conductor Daniel Barenboim contrasts highly charged grandeur with expansive lyricism

Crossover disc intermingles operatic arias and songs representing black African and American culture

The ‘tears of St Peter’ resonated powerfully with the austere surroundings of Greyfriars Kirk

The 2014 Edinburgh International Festival began with a resolutely anti-populist musical programme

Rubato, lilt and elegance reign supreme, and you’ll find yourself partying to the sound of imperial Vienna

The composer’s most successful opera underscores her gift for concision and sound-pictures of sophisticated lyricism

Four-movement viola concerto – part romantic narrative, part reverie, part hymn to nature – comes across as a winner

Marc-André Dalbavie’s new opera ‘Charlotte Salomon’ is the pick of the festival

Katie Mitchell’s stunning new multimedia piece speaks powerfully about men, women and war

Colin Davis’s tempi may be gentler than in his prime, and the LSO cannot match the lightness of period-instrument orchestras, but there is gracefulness aplenty

Geoffrey Webber and Barnaby Brown used a variety of historically sourced ingredients and the results are spellbinding

German baritone Christian Gerhaher was born to play the title role in Monteverdi’s opera

Most of the songs in the 24-piece recital celebrate the darkness of melancholy and unrequited love

The opera’s structure comes across with epic force thanks to David Parry’s stylistically assured conducting

This delightful anthology demonstrates that the composer is heir to the 20th-century English song tradition

A gory tale of illicit love, portrayed in sumptuous orchestral colours, its intensity barely contained until the denouement

The mezzo soprano and her regular accompanist explore the folk-inspired work of five classical composers spanning a century

The duo bring their interpretation to disc with the same conviction and charismatic force as their live rendition