Jingle Hell! The famous Christmas music guaranteed to ruin the holiday season
As the Christmas season approaches, the BBC Music Magazine team share the festive tunes that make our hearts sink
Review: Shades of Mourning (Tamar Sagiv)
Roger Thomas is impressed by the elegant skill and emotional conviction of this accomplished debut
Best Christmas carols: the 37 greatest festive hymns of all time
Here's a list of the best-ever Christmas carols for the festive season, as voted for by 50 top choral experts from across the UK and US. Do you agree with their choices?
Celebrate the future of music with the Festival Academy Budapest
FAB celebrates its 10-year anniversary in 2025 with honoured guests and young talent
Your guide to the best audio gifts this Christmas 2025
Public voting opens for the RPS Inspiration Award 2026
Awarded annually at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the Inspiration prize recognises UK amateur music making
Peer Gynt: a guide to Edvard Grieg's popular masterpiece
When asked to write music for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, Grieg thought he was facing an impossible challenge. But, as Terry Blain relates, the composer’s perseverance resulted in a masterpiece
of matchless character and colour
Review: Kalevi Aho – Moonlight Concerto, etc
Claire Jackson is mightily impressed by Sharon Bezaly’s mastery of the rare alto flute
The best headphones to help you listen while you work
Music is helping prisoners turn away from crime. Here's how
Organisations providing musical opportunities in prisons do much to preserve dignity and encourage rehabilitation, discovers Abigail Frymann Rouch
Meet the most fascinating figures from classical music
What can musicians do to help tackle climate change?
Delia Stevens from percussion and harmonica/melodeon duo Stevens & Pound writes about her relationship with music and the climate
When is the right time for musicians to retire?
Put bluntly, age and experience used to be venerated much more than they are now, writes Richard Morrison
Shock impact and religious zeal: how historically informed performance revolutionised classical music
The great composers
Explore the lives and works of classical music's finest composers
Meet Hildur Guðnadóttir – the star composer of Joker and Chernobyl
Cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir has forged a career spanning classical, film and electronics – but she’s always been drawn to unsettling themes, as she tells Claire Jackson
Sex mad: music's 11 most bed-hopping composers, ranked
Jeremy Pound lifts the covers off those notorious notesmiths who found the thrill of playing away simply too hard to resist
Autism? Tourette's? Top psychiatrists assess Mozart's bizarre, brilliant mind
Using today’s psychoanalytic methods, what can we learn, asks Rebecca Franks, about the mind of Mozart, perhaps the greatest musical genius of all?
This composer's personal life was an enigma. His music is a thing of wonder
We explore the life and work of Maurice Ravel, master craftsman of French music
Greatest Recordings
Our recommendations of essential additions to your listening library
Prog rock 1975: ranking the 17 greatest prog albums turning 50 this year
1975 was a landmark year for progressive rock, delivering groundbreaking albums that pushed musical boundaries and redefined the genre’s scope. Here are the 15 best
Ranked: the 21 greatest country rock albums of all time
When rock met country, magic happened — steel guitars, road songs, and restless hearts. These 21 albums defined that bittersweet crossroads
These 15 stone-cold classic albums were a nightmare to make
From Fleetwood Mac to Tears for Fears: 15 classic rock albums that cost blood, sweat and tears to put together
Genesis: all 15 albums ranked from worst to best (the top 5 were SO tough)
We rank every Genesis studio album, from their early prog masterpieces to the stadium filling pop-rock of the 1980s
Albums of the week
A selection of the best reviewed albums from the latest issue of BBC Music Magazine
Review: Strauss: 'Ein Heldenleben' (Philharmonia / Rouvali)
Sarah Urwin Jones is captivated by Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s take on Strauss
Review: Harry Partch – The Wayward (Partch Ensemble)
Kate Wakeling is captivated by the Partch Ensemble’s compelling realisation of a truly original body of works
Review: Golden Age (Erin Morley, Lawrence Brownlee)
Morley and Brownlee are on sensational form in 19th-century arias and duets, writes George Hall
Rock music
Explore rock music
Rock's 9 luckiest breaks: the freak accidents that created enduring icons
From rain-soaked concerts to last-minute substitutions and happy accidents, rock history is full of chance moments that changed everything
These 11 legendary albums were made shockingly fast
11 classic albums that prove that the greatest rock masterpieces are often captured in a sudden, brilliant blur
These are the 19 best 1980s album covers – ranked
We count down the greatest album artworks of the 1980s, where bold visual ideas matched the groundbreaking musical statements within...
Audio equipment reviews and advice
A selection of the best reviewed albums from the latest issue of BBC Music Magazine
