If there’s one reason why Samuel Barber should have lived to be 100, it’s the upside-down irony that his monumental New York flop is Philadelphia’s hottest opera ticket.

In 1961, Pablo Casals played for John F. Kennedy at the White House. The concert could be seen as a symbol of the importance of the arts to the Kennedy administration, or as a gesture of honor to a great cellist.

A master violinist spends much of his life up in the air
Christian Tetzlaff will fly more than 17,000 miles, visit three continents and cross more than a dozen time zones over the span of two weeks.

Simon Rattle is coming home to Birmingham for a rare working visit — but he holds few hopes for his native land
So you think the mood in Britain is gloomy? The view from Berlin looks even more apocalyptic, it seems. “If I were not British,” says Britain’s most celebrated conductor, “I would say that this old country of ours is going through a kind of endgame.”

Pavarotti started the ball rolling. On the occasion of a concert he gave in 1986 to a packed crowd of 10,000 Chinese at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, the tenor expressed a single regret, that “the capital of the world’s most populous nation should be without a suitable opera theater.”

TWO centuries ago an elfin musical prodigy, Frédéric Chopin, was born in a village near Warsaw. At 11, he dazzled the Russian tsar, Alexander I, with his own piano music. His poetic performances continued to enthrall; at 22, he was at the pinnacle of Parisian society.

Imagine this: you drop onto the sofa on a Sunday afternoon, switch on the TV and see a dapper young man with a baton standing before an orchestra and demonstrating the patterns conductors use to lead music in different meters — two, three, four and five beats to the bar.

THE richest headhunt in classical music has ended with the world’s most coveted pianist switching teams at a critical moment for the industry. Lang Lang, 27, has signed with Sony Classical for $US 3 million ($3.4 million), says an executive at his old label, Deutsche Grammophon.

Pierre Boulez has traveled vast distances since those early years when the incendiary young modernist clawed and shouted his way to the top of the Parisian musical avant-garde. Having made the long journey from enfant terrible to grand old man, he no longer has to shout to be heard. And when he makes pronouncements, he no longer does so with lofty derision but with smiling authority.

Manfred Eicher, the founder of the German classical and jazz label, has demonstrated for decades a level of foresight and intuition that has allowed him to discover talent and cross-pollinate a wide range of styles.