Featured Articles and News

Revisitation of the Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings

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Haunting or bewitching are words that come to mind to the hundreds of thousands of those who have experienced Samuel Barber’s 1936 Adagio for Strings. Or the countless millions whose lives have been unwittingly changed by eight minutes of music of which they could not name composer or title. Composer and title are so inextricably … Read more

Contributors look back on events Seen and Heard in 2021

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Reflecting on the past year – and perhaps with their hopes for the future – are … MARK BERRY: It has, for reasons all too obvious, been another strange musical year. Whereas in 2020 we had just over two months of ‘normality’, an apparently auspicious beginning to Beethoven Year, followed by the Great Deafness, intermittently … Read more

Harry Sever is Longborough’s first Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow

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Longborough Festival Opera has appointed Harry Sever as its first Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow

Harry Sever (c) James Rose Photography

Harry Sever will work alongside Longborough Music Director and eminent Wagnerian Anthony Negus for the next three seasons as the festival builds towards its 2024 Ring cycle. For his first performance in the post, Sever will conduct Siegfried at Longborough on Friday 3 June 2022.

CLICK HERE to stream for FREE (until 25 February 2022) this year’s Die Walküre 

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R.I.P. IN MEMORIAM BERNARD HAITINK (1929–2021)

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Seen and Heard International is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Bernard Haitink and reproduces the statements from the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Opera House

Bernard Haitink © Clive Barda

The London Symphony Orchestra was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Bernard Haitink, who passed away at the age of 92 on 21 October.

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Round-up of the George Enescu Festival 2021

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Round-up of the George Enescu Festival 2021

In recent years a biennial event, the George Enescu Festival has been lucky with the coronavirus pandemic: the last festival was held in 2019, six months before the first lockdown. The 25th edition of the festival, held in September 2021, then came along as the vaccines have offered a light at the end of the tunnel, at least for the world’s richest countries. Even with some of these countries being among the most vaccine-hesitant (Romania has the second-lowest vaccination rate in the EU), the festival was able to go ahead with nearly full halls, thanks to a safety concept that mandated the EU digital COVID certificate for entry and the wearing of masks during performances. With these measures in place, the festival ran for four weeks – the longest duration in its history – and saw 78 concerts performed by 3,500 artists in Bucharest, including 32 orchestras from 14 countries.

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