Decorated Musicians

Yesong Sophie Lee, just 12 years old has won the biennial 2016 Menuhin competition, held in London last month. It was the centenary of the competition whose Laureates include Australians Ray Chen, Susie Park and Grace Clifford, Germany’s Julia Fisher and Russia’s Alina Ibragimova. Charlotte Smith in The Strad asks whether competitions are defined more…

Until yesterday, Michael Kaiser was the President of the John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. After 29 years spent running 5 arts institutions he has sat at his last board meeting and writes that he will “breathe a sigh of relief” when he leaves the board room for the last time. Read his…

What is the secret of the enduring appeal of the music of JS Bach?! Even of you don’t like his music, the complexity of his writing, his output and his role as an innovator are unparalleled.  Pianist James Rhodes claims that Bach takes us into a “fourth dimension of existence.” Read more from BBC Culture.

  The Financial Review has published a collection of images of what the Sydney Opera House might have looked like. These are some of the entries that were displayed at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in January 1957. The Sydney landscape could have looked so different! Click here.