'She's been to our rehearsals. It doesn’t flummox her that it can get out of hand'

An old railway route has been turned into 13 miles of cycling pleasure, says Fred Mawer

In the Easter splurge of Bach, John Eliot Gardiner’s ‘marathon’ was always going to stand out, and it marked the culmination of a lifelong crusade.

Few composers can inject as much significance into thirty seconds of music as Gyorgy Kurtag, and few writers have equalled the aphoristic terseness of Franz Kafka, so Kurtag’s Kafka Fragments represents a marriage made, if not in heaven, certainly in a grimly harmonious version of hell.

Dr David Bramwell, creator of the Cheeky Guides series, is also an expert "trickologist" and will be performing a comic lecture on the history of hoaxes, pranks and mischief at Hendrick's Carnival of Knowledge at the Brighton Fringe in May. Here he shares three of his favourite lesser-known pranks.

The Russian composer Victor Kissine's work has been accurately described as possessing a “reticent musical language”, a characteristic skilfully demonstrated by Gidon Kremer's Kremerata Baltica on this album of three chamber-music premieres.

The former MP's music manager husband has influenced the careers of major acts such as Madonna, Foals and Snow Patrol

It was thought to be the one stolen from Korean virtuoso Min-jin Kym at Euston station in 2010

Ed Miliband said today that British politics will be a “poorer place” after his brother David confirmed that he is standing down immediately as an MP to head a New York-based charity.

Wigmore Hall, London

'I'd love McCartney but he'd want too much say'

News anchor accepts proposal live on air

The instrument, alleged to have belonged to band leader Wallace Hartley and to have been strapped to his chest when he was plucked from the sea, is set to be auctioned. But the Titanic Historical Society has questioned its origins

Phosphorescent's Matthew Houck augments his usual reedy Americana stylings with some unexpected developments on Muchacho, most notably the undulating synthesiser arpeggios that bookend the album on “Sun, Arise!” and “Sun's Arising”: combined with his multitracked falsetto vocal harmonies, they sound like Fleet Foxes might if they were a krautrock band.