The Latest Breaking News from Harrison Birtwistle

Conductor of contemporary opera and and trailblazing force in the tradition-bound world of brass band music

The late Peter Eötvös’s slender and nuanced Secret Kiss didn’t hold the attention; works by Julian Anderson, Lisa Illean and Rebecca Saunders fared better in this Birmingham Contemporary Music Group concert

This London Sinfonietta tribute concert, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, was a poignant occasion that showcased both the excoriating power and tranquillity of Birtwistle’s music

A lifetime’s experience tells as Zubin Mehta graces the Proms along with Australia’s finest, while a stellar tag team of friends and colleagues pay tribute to Harrison Birtwistle

It’s been 33 years since the last Prom dedicated to brass band music, while Gavin Higgins’ concerto for Brass band and orchestra is the first Proms commission of its kind. It’s time to forget that Hovis ad and celebrate the banding world

Two concerts from the festival’s fourth day included tributes to Oliver Knussen and Harrison Birtwistle alongside intriguing electronic shapeshifting from a contemporary ensemble based in Wales

LOS ANGELES — When Harrison Birtwistle died last week at 87, he became the sixth pioneering composer who came to prominence in the 1960s that we lost in less than nine months. This uncompromising British modernist, along with Holland's most important composer, Louis Andriessen, and Americans Frederic Rzewski, George Crumb,…

Stephen Baron writes: His individuality as a composer was relected in his dress

The Observer’s classical music critic pays tribute to a composer whose exacting work was hard-won, but who marvelled at everything from homegrown plums to Dusty Springfield