Violinist Min Kym: ‘My schoolgirl crush was Beethoven’s 4th’
The musician and author on growing up a child prodigy, dealing with anorexia, and coping with the loss of a beloved Stradivarius worth £1.2m
Les Enfants Terribles: Cocteau’s scandalous siblings dance on the edge
Ahead of the Royal Ballet’s new production of Philip Glass’s dance opera, based on the poetic French novel, choreographer Javier De Frutos and his principal dancers talk incest, jealousy and revenge
Being Wagner by Simon Callow review – all velvet cloak and no trousers
Callow’s life of Wagner reveals more about his wardrobe than his genius
On my radar: Parminder Nagra’s cultural highlights
The actor on filming Fortitude, Culture Club comebacks and haute cuisine in Iceland
Get ready, here I come: 20 talents set to take 2017 by storm
The singer who stunned Pharrell, the writer to rival Pynchon, the son of a stone carver making art out of his body … we choose 20 names to watch in stage, film, books, art, design, music and TV
BBCSO/Oramo review – a bewitching poetic meditation
Barbican, LondonKaija Saariaho’s song cycle True Fire wove works by Emerson and Heaney into a pulsing sonic web, with baritone Gerald Finley exemplary at its heart
Independent thinking: can music shops survive on today’s high street?
Small retailers everywhere are struggling to compete with online competition. But one classical music store in north London is surviving - and even thriving
On my radar: Daphne Guinness’s cultural highlights
The fashion designer talks about her love of Caravaggio, the films of Stanley Kubrick, David Bowie’s final album and why opera shouldn’t be painful
From Schubert to Sinatra: why the song cycle speaks to the heart
A new English version of Die Schöne Müllerin offers a reminder as to why it’s Sinatra – not his classical contemporaries – that matches Schubert in ambition
The 10 best… things to do this week
From Louis Theroux to A Tale of Two Cities: your at-a-glance guide to the best in free culture up and down the country
Martians, music and mud: how the Thames Estuary broadened cultural horizons
It was Conrad’s gateway to the heart of darkness, HG Wells envisaged Martians on its misty shores. Now artists from around the world are exploring the mysteries of the Thames Estuary
On my radar: Paul Nurse’s cultural highlights
The geneticist on the joys of Alexander Calder and Nordic noir, plus virtuoso performances from Simon McBurney and András Schiff
The shock of the new: how classical music turned atonal
Guardian member John Keenan reviews The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross, a study of how classical music reflected the 20th century’s cultural and political upheavals
How English composers turned minor poems into major works
New titles, altered words, axed stanzas – composers from Elgar to Vaughan Williams brutally reworked the verse they set, and made it immortal
Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by Anna Beer – review
This meticulously researched book honours eight female composers who defied the odds and thrived in a man’s world