The Berlin Philharmonic European Concert 2010, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

Berlin comes to Oxford: May Day at the Sheldonian with Barenboim and the Berliners

Thunderous optimism in the annual Europe concert by the crack German players

"Madness! Madness! Everywhere madness!" The unsung words of cobbler-philosopher Hans Sachs in the third-act prelude to Wagner's Die Meistersinger might seem like an odd opening manifesto for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's annual May Day ceremonial concert this morning, hosted this year by Oxford in the gorgeous venue where the Berliners had last played under Karajan a very long time ago. But there was method in it. Whether or not Oxford's traditional May Day eve revels last night had any drunken brawl as threatening as the one which set Sachs meditating on human folly there was certainly a bacchanalian atmosphere outside the Sheldonian - and even more to be found inside.

theartsdesk Q&A: Conductor Semyon Bychkov

Russian conductor on his award-winning recording of Lohengrin and his mentor Karajan

Yesterday afternoon, Semyon Bychkov's recording of Lohengrin won BBC Music Magazine's prestigious disc of the year. Last year, The Sunday Telegraph named his recording of Eugene Onegin one of the top 10 opera recordings of all time. Proof - if proof were needed - that the Russian conductor is one of the living greats of the operatic pit. His upcoming Tannhäuser next season at Covent Garden is awaited with bated breath.

The Seckerson Tapes: Opera Holland Park

Opera Holland Park's dynamic duo: Artistic Director James Clutton and General Manager Michael Volpe

Behind the scenes at one of Britain's best-kept operatic secrets

The auditorium has risen once more, the box office is open and busy, and the peacocks are out – Opera Holland Park in London is gearing up for the new season. In this “live and uncut” podcast Edward Seckerson talks to James Clutton (above, left) and Michael Volpe about opera rarities, exciting young talent, exciting older talent, the prospect of Wagner (could there be a Dutchman in the offing?), the X Factor, and much, much more. In keeping with the name of Opera Holland Park's community project INSPIRE, the mix of operas reaching into 2012 and beyond is as eclectic as ever with old favourites rubbing shoulders with some of opera’s best-kept secrets. This season aficionados will be jumping up and down at the enticing prospect of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini with Cheryl Barker and Julian Gavin. All this and the Volpe Diaries, too…..

theartsdesk Q&A: Opera Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser

Opera's Gilbert and George on their unique 30-year collaboration as directors

It is rare enough for directors to collaborate in theatre, even rarer in opera. Patrice Caurier (b. Paris, 1954) and Moshe Leiser (b. Antwerp, 1956) began their long collaboration in their 20s. They are now in their 50s, and since that first production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Opéra de Lyon in 1982, they have never worked (or lived) apart. Cohabiting and collaborating, they are opera’s closest equivalent to Gilbert and George.

Philharmonia, Mackerras, RFH

Sir Charles Mackerras: hitting the right emotional spots with effortless mastery

Masterclasses in style and emotion from the greatest octogenarian conductor

Creative old age brings with it not just the expected serene glow but also a singular urgency, a fresh intensity, or so that magisterial pianist Claudio Arrau once wrote. Arrau was a living testament to his claim; so, now, is the 84-year-old Sir Charles Mackerras. Everything he's chosen to bring to life this season has a valedictory quality, or perhaps he simply selects the best. His Philharmonia diptych of concerts led us from the Wagnerian end of the world on Thursday to a Sunday afternoon of prelapsarian innocence in Beethoven's pastoral idyll and paradise regained in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel.

Haitink, Chicago SO, Royal Festival Hall

Octogenarian maestro still commands the podium


Strolling into the Royal Festival Hall's private function room on Level 5 last night, I naturally expected it to be crammed with freeloading hacks such as myself on the trail of free drinks, but the room was mostly populated by corporate types in suits. If you want to pull together a menu of prestigious international orchestras in these straitened times (particularly those elusive American ones),  you can't hope to do better than enlist the support of a multinational oil company, and this was the opening night of the RFH's Shell Classic International season.

4.30 am. Encounter with Gergiev

Leadership is what matters, says the Russian conductor

Outside it’s snowing in the pale and spectral city of St Petersburg. Inside it’s 4.30 am and we’ve been drinking for several hours in a restaurant next to the Mariinsky Theatre when Valery Gergiev, for many the world’s greatest conductor and with a reputation as a wild man, suggests now would be the best time for an interview with him.

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