It might be deduced that the only thing worse than working with children and animals would be working with children as animals. But Leoš Janáček was unfazed by the old Hollywood adage and his cartoon-strip derived opera The Cunning Little Vixen was spirited from page to stage with uncynical conviction and, it has to be said, no end of technical hazards.

How do you compare multiple Einsteins? Well, it's all relative

It's hard to resist the retro-romance of Irving Berlin's tunes, fabulous dance routines and charming stars. Pity about the plot, though

The impressive range of Piers Hellawell's work is displayed on this collection of six compositions, five of which are premiere recordings.

This musician-turned-naturalist finds via his fieldwork that calls and cries can be matter of wild life and death.

The ska form was conceived by Brevett and his peers in the run-up to Jamaican independence

The front curtain at the London Coliseum is a rare sight these days and suggested that we might for once be about to experience Wagner’s celebrated Overture without “illustration”.

It's not uncommon for Western composers like Tavener to bring Eastern influences into their work, but much rarer for an Indian classicist to operate in the Western tradition, as Ravi Shankar does here in his Symphony, which follows the classical four-movement structure but incorporates sitar (played by Shankar's daughter Anoushka) and raga scales into the orchestration.

The world-famous conductor Kurt Masur is recovering in hospital in Paris after he fell off a podium during a concert.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt and CMW offer a history of the waltz and other dances in music from Mozart to Johann Strauss and his contemporary Joseph Lanner.

The Italian Tom Waits/Tom Zé/Paolo Conte (take your pick) has taken musical ambition to new heights on this long-awaited effort.

Passions are running high among the oppressed populace, and a weak colonial administrator decides to appease the angry crowd by throwing them a celebrated rebel as a sacrifice.