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Raff: Complete Works for Cello & Piano – not quite a silk purse

Christoph Croisé and Oxana Shevchenko show this limited composer in his best light

Charles Villiers Stanford, who was born in Herbert Street in 1852 and died in London in 1924, was a major musical figure in his lifetime

Charles Villiers Stanford: More than a teacher of composers

Music programme to focus on Stanford’s composing rather than his catalogue of pupils

Sam Perkin: Flow album review – Pass the joint

Time is stilled on Perkin’s new release

JS Bach/Karlheinz Essl: Gold.Berg.Werk – Electronic meditations and variations

Laoise O’Brien couldn’t have chosen a better time to take up the cause of championing the recorder

Laoise O’Brien: Crusader on behalf of her instrument, the recorder

‘What I loved about it, and no disrespect to my flute-playing colleagues, was the camaraderie’

The National Concert Hall has hosted an enormous variety of performances in the last four decades.

National Concert Hall: The best bits from 40 years of performance

Artists from all genres share their favourite moments from within the hallowed walls

Elsewhere: Michael Gallen’s new opera was sparked by the seizure of Monaghan asylum in 1919. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Elsewhere: Agitprop opera combines the serious and the comic

Michael Gallen’s polyglot minimalist music captures energy of historic Monaghan strike

Elaine Kelly: ‘Opera is the ultimate’

Leader of the pack: The strange art of conducting

Elaine Kelly forged a dynamic path with Irish National Opera during lockdown

Michael Gallen and Fiona Monbet. Photograph: Shawn Fitzgerald

The Monaghan Soviet: How the people took over the asylum

Michael Gallen on the event in his home county that inspired a new opera at the Abbey Theatre

Fidelo: under Fergus Sheil, the Irish National Opera Orchestra captures the composer’s familiar musical language, which here beautifully underscores the story’s triumphs for love and for freedom

Fidelio: Irish National Opera sends us home exhilarated

Review: An ingeniously staged, persuasively sung production of Beethoven’s sole opera

IBO artistic director and harpsichordist Peter Whelan. Photograph: Marco Borggreve

My favourite Brandenburg: ‘A weird kaleidoscope of all that could possibly be’

IBO musicians choose which of these celebrated Bach concertos they like the most

Con Brio: Widmann, Strauss, Beethoven – A circumspect recording

Work commissioned as part of project by Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Sinéad Campbell Wallace: ‘It’s kind of like driving a very different car,’ she says of the change in her voice. Photograph: Kip Carroll

Sinéad Campbell Wallace on returning to opera: ‘It’s in my bones’

Going back to singing was a challenge – not least because her voice had changed

The final performance of The 47th Saturday is on Thursday, October 28th at 3.30pm. Photograph: David Sleator

The 47th Saturday review: Nicely paced but vocal projection is overdone

Wexford Festival Opera: Young cast cope well with demands of Andrew Synnott’s music

German tenor Burkhard Fritz brings Heldentenor fervour and intensity to the paranoid Leontes

Ein Wintermärchen review: Warmest emotional indulgence on offer

Wexford Festival Opera: The opera is more engaging in the moment than as a whole

I Capuleti e i Montecchi: Capellio (Rory Dunne) and ensemble. Photograph: Clive Barda/ ArenaPal

I Capuleti e i Montecchi: A different take on Romeo and Juliet

Wexford Festival Opera: A young cast takes on Bellini’s challenging music

Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Été: Hasmik Torosyan as Elizabeth, Tommaso Barea as Falstaff and Valentina Mastrangelo as Olivia. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPal

Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Été: Comic opera’s limitations exposed

Wexford Festival Opera: Action is neatly handled, but the real flaw is the music

Wexford Festival Opera: Anne Sophie Duprels as Edmea, Ivan Shcherbatykh as the Count of Leitmeritz, and Leon Kim as Ulmo. Photograph: Clive Barda/ArenaPal

Edmea: A psychological slant on a popular work

Wexford Festival Opera: Chorus and orchestra overcome Covid-restricted numbers with gusto

Wexford persuaded the government to fund the new Wexford Opera House but, if Daly is to be believed, there was no strategy for maintenance or refurbishment. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

A chorus of crises: Wexford, opera and the festival

Karina Daly’s fascinating book is lean on links with RTÉ, Arts Council and Mazars

Jennifer Walshe: ‘I think sometimes people got into music because they felt it was disconnected from everyday concerns. They felt it was a realm of pure aesthetics.’ Photograph: Katja Ogrin/Redferns

Jennifer Walshe, Oxford’s new professor of composition: ‘It’s a big responsibility’

Her appointment is a first in Irish music, but she just wants to ‘do right’ by her students

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