The world’s busiest violinist offers his thoughts on a life in music, including how to play naturally, getting on with conductors, dealing with nerves and social media, and avoiding caffeine and sugar Augustin Hadelich is one of today’s supreme violinists, perfectly balancing intellect, emotion and soul, all with a vast palette of sound and superb taste. It’s not surprising, therefore, that he’s also the busiest, according to Bachtrack, or that he references Norbert Brainin and David Oistrakh among his influences. I interviewed him for the front cover of the March issue of The Strad, and ..read more

FROM THE ARCHIVE Steve Reich’s quartet Different Trains has the power to reduce an audience to tears, but how does it feel to perform and record the work? It’s thirty years since I played Steve Reich’s shattering, seminal Different Trains as a student, and I’m excited to have the chance to repeat the experience later this month in Edinburgh. In search of useful information, I went back to an article I wrote for The Strad for his 70th birthday in 2006, in which I interviewed the composer himself as well as some of the chamber musicians who have played the work. On Reich’s 87th birthday, here is ..read more

I’m back from a visit to Stockholm for a BBC Music Magazine Musical Destination piece focused on the opening of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the arrival of its new Chief Conductor, Ryan Bancroft. While there, I went full culture tourist and here are some of the highlights… Opening night in Stockholm For the first concert of his tenure, Bancroft conducted Sven-David Sandström’s 1994 The High Mass, a visceral, intense work, modelled on the structure of Bach’s B minor Mass, but with a sound world evocative of tectonic plates moving ineluctably onwards while siren sopranos howl ..read more

Have you ever wondered about the origins of your stringed instrument? I visited the Bavarian town of Mittenwald to explore the roots of my own Sebastian Kloz and revel in some niche violin tourism I recently returned from a trip to Mittenwald, in the Bavarian Alps, on the trail of music and violins for the November issue of BBC Music magazine. It’s a beautiful little town, nestled between titanic mountains that loom at the end of most streets, with the pure turquoise Isar river running through, a stunningly-ceilinged Catholic church in the centre and pretty houses painted with the distinctive ..read more

Have you ever wondered about the origins of your stringed instrument? I visited the Bavarian town of Mittenwald to explore the roots of my own Sebastian Kloz and revel in some niche violin tourism I recently returned from a trip to Mittenwald, in the Bavarian Alps, on the trail of music and violins for the November issue of BBC Music magazine. It’s a beautiful little town, nestled between titanic mountains that loom at the end of most streets, with the pure turquoise Isar river running through, a stunningly-ceilinged Catholic church in the centre and pretty houses painted with the distinctive ..read more

Two Australian orchestral violinists have found millions of fans for classical music with their hilarious and geeky videos. I went to the London leg of their world tour to find out their secret Two queues wrap around the entire block of a magnificent art deco building in East London. Stretching as far as the eye can see, the neat crocodile is perfectly behaved and wildly diverse: small kids with their parents, huddles of trendy teenagers, middle-aged couples – every size, shape and colour. The bouncers seem a little bemused, more used to rock-gig and club-night audiences. A curious local steps ..read more

The legendary German violinist discusses her approach to performance and shares her hopes and fears for the future of classical music I recently interviewed Anne-Sophie Mutter for BBC Music Magazine, marking her 60th birthday in June. She was full of humour and honesty, including the bombshell opinion that violin playing and teaching is in crisis today. You’ll have to buy the issue to read about that and the rest of the interview, including her memories of Henryk Szeryng and Mstislav Rostropovich, but there was so much great material I didn’t have space for, so I’m publishing the quotes I coul ..read more

Newark School of Violin Making has an alumni list that reads like a Who’s Who of the violin world. As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, could this national treasure be at risk? If you were to ask most string players about the great violin making traditions, they’d probably go straight to Italy – probably Cremona – and then maybe France or Germany. Britain might not even feature in a list. And yet a violin-making school in Nottinghamshire, UK, has been turning out some of the world’s leading luthiers, restorers and experts for 50 years now. The Newark School of Violin Making celebrated this m ..read more

On the next stop of my Interrail trip, I head to Baden-Baden to hear Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic play Strauss From Bach in Leipzig to Strauss in Baden-Baden was quite a journey – four and a half hours by train (coincidentally, the length of Die Frau ohne Schatten, which I was going to see), passing through historic music hotspots on the way, including Erfurt, Eisenach and Mannheim, and imagining composers doing the same by carriage. Musically, the voyage seemed much further, though. Baden-Baden is one of those magical place names that has always kindled my imagination – whether ..read more

Hearing Bach’s St John Passion in the composer’s own church was a concert of a lifetime I didn’t think Bach would stick a knife in my guts and twist it, but that’s what happened last night in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Maybe it was because I’d confused myself about which church it was in and ended up running there with two minutes to spare. Maybe it was because I’d come to Leipzig specially and for a few moments I thought I’d missed it. But mainly, I think it was down to Bach, the Gewandhaus Orchestra and the significance of the venue – Bach was Kantor there from 1723 to 1750. The silence o ..read more