The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Celebrating György Kurtág’s 100th Birthday

10th February 2026

Like the rest of us mere mortals, few great composers live to celebrate their 100th birthday. Songwriter Irving Berlin (1888–1989) famously lived to the age of 101, although he retired from composing in his 70s. The widely respected American modernist master Elliott Carter (1908–2012) reached 103, and completed his last work just a few months before his death. This month sees the great Hungarian composer György Kurtág (b. 19 February 1926) mark his centenary in style, with a two-week festival of his music in Budapest, the... read more

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Audiences Behaving Badly? (or: Rumble at the Garden)

3rd February 2026

We live in volatile times. Anyone who has been brave enough to watch the news for even a few seconds will know this. The same is true, it seems, of our concert halls and opera houses, and I’m not talking here about the funding cuts and other threats hanging over so many venues and art organisations. The widespread booing at the end of a recent truncated Covent Garden performance of Puccini’s Turandot made headlines because it was so uncharacteristic of normal British behaviour. The circumstances, however, were highly... read more

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Celebrating Lully’s ‘Atys’

28th January 2026

It is 350 years ago this month since the premiere of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s tragédie en musique, Atys. It was performed at the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, on the western outskirts of Paris, on 10 January 1676. Its public premiere took place three months later at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. Although its public reception was relatively muted, Atys soon became known as ‘the King’s opera’ because of Louis’s enthusiasm for it. Coming during a lull in the ongoing Franco-Dutch War of the... read more

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Performance Diary: A Late Renaissance Tale of Murder & Death + When More is Less

21st January 2026

During the past week I managed to find time to attend not one but two memorable concerts in London, spurred on by the New Year’s resolutions featured here a couple of weeks ago. The Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, situated at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square, was built to a neoclassical design by Scottish architect James Gibbs between 1722 and 1726. It launched its tercentenary celebrations in highly distinctive fashion with two performances of a ‘theatrical concert’ entitled ‘The Death of Gesualdo’. Directed by... read more

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Quiet Focus: Celebrating Morton Feldman

14th January 2026

Most classical music of the standard repertoire – from the Baroque period to the present day – takes the idea of musical development (of motifs, themes and tunes) as a fundamental principle, within a variety of forms that vary from period to period, and often within some sort of narrative framework (explicit or implicit). The music of the American composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987) is quite different. It is concerned with extension rather than development, often evolving quietly and gradually over large time-spans. It... read more

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