On my radar: Richard Sennett’s cultural highlights
The American sociologist on gardening, the Open Britain campaign and Janáček’s quartets
On my radar: Alex Kapranos’s cultural highlights
The Franz Ferdinand frontman on the films on Yorgos Lanthimos, the electropop of the future and how he connects with home when on tour
Is this woman the next Philip Glass? And why is she wearing a loudspeaker?
Rolex is paying a fortune to pair young artists up with stars like David Adjaye, Joan Jonas and Alfonso Cuarón. Is there a catch? We join their big Berlin jamboree
Kerry Andrew on writing supernatural fiction: ‘I had to spook myself out’
The musician and writer on her debut novel, Swansong, inspired by a 17th-century ballad, her inspirations and the wisdom of Robert Macfarlane
Charles Osborne obituary
Author, poet, biographer and theatre critic who was literature director of the Arts Council of Great Britain
La Sonate de Vinteuil CD review – Milstein sisters play detective in search of Proust’s lost phrase
The mysterious ‘petite phrase’ of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu is the starting point for this hugely enjoyable disc of French violin sonatas
Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day – review
Taking one tune at a time, Clemency Burton-Hill explores how people have used the power of music to connect for a thousand years
Miley, Morrissey and Marnie the opera: the essential pop, classical and jazz for autumn 2017
Liam goes for broke, St Vincent bounces back, Nico Muhly gets Hitchcockian, Taylor Swift defends her reputation, and Peggy Seeger pens her memoirs
Tom Phillips: two skulls, 50,000 postcards and a book that took 50 years to finish
He’s now in his 80s but the man who painted Beckett, illustrated Hell and made art out of beard trimmings, is still fired up. As his half-backwards opera Irma returns, we join the great experimentalist for a boozy lunch of artisanal bubble and squeak
My uncle Siegfried: Sister Jessica Gatty on her life-changing friendship with the great war poet
Siegfried Sassoon’s intense friendship with his niece caused a family fallout and led to her becoming a nun. As new opera Silver Birch explores the writer’s life and beliefs, we meet her in her convent
The Observer critics’ guide to the summer holidays
Make cultural hay while the sun shines with our reviewers’ suggestions, from dreamy R&B to vintage Keanu Reeves to op art in the country
The World Was Once All Miracle review – Anthony Burgess’s musical powers
Raymond Yiu’s song cycle built on the novelist’s poems and the European premiere of Burgess’s Symphony in C showcased another side to one of Manchester’s most famous sons
David Wulstan obituary
Director of the Clerkes of Oxenford, pioneering performers of Tudor polyphony
Sounds and the city: how Manhattan made the music of Edgard Varèse
With sirens and whistles, Varèse brought the noises of 1920s New York into the concert halls at a time when writers were transporting their readers to the streets
Gone by Min Kym review – one prodigy’s passion for her violin
The theft of Min Kym’s Stradivarius made worldwide headlines – but her autobiography shows that wasn’t all she’d lost in life