Matchless

Philip Pullman delights in Mérimée's tale of a fatal passion for the Gypsy who worked in a cigar factory

This green and pleasant land

The theme of this year's Aldeburgh festival is landscape. Writer-in-residence Adam Thorpe introduces his short story about an Englishman who won't accept its demise

The dynamic duo

Accompanists have always been neglected. So why do Brendel, Schiff and Uchida want to play along?

Musical truth

From nursery rhymes to Berlin cabaret, WH Auden was in love with song

Lost in translation

Turandot still needs to apologise, argues James Fenton, even if her opera has a new ending

Life after death

When a composer dies, should their unpublished work die too? Michael Berkeley, for one, is glad to have glimpsed early Britten

Bittersweet symphonies

Long before he won the Booker prize, DBC Pierre was dodging bailiffs and battling depression. Suicide seemed the only way out - until he discovered Brahms, Elgar and Rachmaninov ...

Flesh and fantasy

Janácek's love for Kamila Stösslova inspired his late masterpieces. But how much can we trust his version of the relationship - and do the facts even matter, asks Ian Bostridge

Lost in emotion

It was dismissed as slapdash and silly. But at least Tchaikovsky's version of Evgeny Onegin brings real feeling to Pushkin's cynical characters, says Catriona Kelly

Don’t knock baroque

Just because I like it doesn't mean you will. James Fenton learns to keep his taste in music to himself

Sounds familiar

In music as in life, first loves often endure. But, argues Michael Berkeley, they can be limiting

What would a modern Mozart be like?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on January 27 1756, the last of seven children, five of whom died in infancy or early childhood.

Four’s a crowd

How do the members of a string quartet play together and tour together year in, year out, without killing each other? Cellist David Waterman reveals the truth