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Tom talks to the Russian-born Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, who joins the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in February for concerto and chamber concerts.

Alongside his highly-acclaimed concert performances and recordings of Romantic piano repertoire, Giltburg also blogs about the inner workings of classical music, his aim being to make it "less daunting and complex" to a wide audience. Tom hears the story behind his latest post, in which he presented his own recordings of two chaconnes by Bach and Gubaidulina in a tribute to victims of the Paris attacks last November. 

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As Glyndebourne’s education department celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, Glyndebourne Youth Opera prepares for the first performances of Nothing, a new opera based on the Danish author Janne Teller's award-winning book about the meaning of life, with music by David Bruce and a libretto by Glyn Maxwell.

Tom visits rehearsals and talks to the composer, to conductor Sian Edwards and some of the young people involved in the production of this confronting drama.

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As György Kurtág turns 90, Tom Service presents a portrait of the Hungarian composer, with contributions from the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Bálint András Varga, whose published interviews with Kurtág have revealed much about Kurtág's life and music, and Manfred Eicher, the founder of ECM Records who has produced many recordings with the composer.

Kurtág's lifelong obsession for reducing music to small fragments of sound, in a quest for intense musical expression, has produced works such as the still-evolving set of piano pieces ´³Ã¡³Ùé°ì´Ç°ì (Games), which Kurtág and his wife Márta have performed together for over 40 years, and the blistering 40-movement cycle for soprano and violin, Kafka Fragments.

Including an exclusive extract from Kurtág’s forthcoming opera, Endgame, performed this week in Budapest during the composer’s 90th birthday celebrations (by kind permission of Budapest Music Center and Editio Musica Budapest).

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