Tom Service

Next week, Tom Service begins a weekly series about the symphony, exploring through the greatest 50 how it tells the story of music and also our own place in the world

Beethoven’s Pastoral is no musical cul-de-sac, writes Tom Service. It’s a radical work, and in its final movement is music more purely spine-tingling and life-enhancingly joyful than almost anywhere else in his output

Forget, first of all, its mis-translated moniker. Tchaikovsky’s final symphony might be about death, but it’s the piece he termed ‘the best thing I have composed’ and is a confident and supremely energetic work

Tom Service’s symphony guide concludes with what is arguably the central artwork of Western music, the symphony to end all symphonies

The maverick composer-pianist was one of the finest musicians of his generation. Tom Service picks his favourite of his compositions

Europe was already convulsed by questions of moral duplicity when La traviata’s Violetta took to the stage. Ahead of a new documentary about Verdi’s masterpiece, Tom Service examines why the tragic heroine caused such a stir

The Chinese-born artist is to be the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s new principal guest conductor. She talks exclusively to Tom Service

There are few parts of the classical music world that do not bear the mark of Boulez’s influence today. Tom Service picks 10 key works that represent the best of the composer and conductor, whose death aged 90 was announced earlier today

David Bowie was a fan of the ‘world’s worst singer’, but is the epithet a fair one?

This year’s BBC Young Musician winner has had to balance revising for exams with preparing for his Royal Festival Hall concerto debut. And then there’s finding time to beat his brother at football ...