This week's highlights include Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Australian World Orchestra and Simone Young conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

The Peruvian maestro with a diary full of Australian dates talks to Clive Paget about career choices, composers who float his boat, and how a zero-waste lifestyle has enabled him to turn garbage into art.

Sir Andrew Davis, Alondra de la Parra and David Robertson are about to conduct their final concerts as artistic chiefs of the Melbourne, Queensland and Sydney Symphony Orchestras respectively. Here’s a look back on their time Down Under.

The Scottish maestro is the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s new Principal Guest Conductor. He talks to Clive Paget about early obsessions, managing relationships, and the thorny question of God and music.

With Stalin bearing down on him, Shostakovich withdrew his monumental Fourth Symphony at the very last minute, consigning it to a drawer for the next 25 years. Mark Wigglesworth tells us why the score was so dangerous, and how the composer’s music changed forever.

From Rattle’s Mozart to English alt-rock band Muse, these are the four albums the energetic violinist is listening to this month.

Catching up with the global phenomenon in New York, Clive Paget discovers how those bold interpretations get developed and learns a few of the things that have made an older and wiser Lang Lang into a more rounded artist.

We spoke to the SSO's Associate Principal Trumpet ahead of concerts celebrating his 40-year anniversary with the ensemble.

The Dutch violinist talks about moving countries to study at the Menuhin School age 11, her remarkably wide repertoire and the challenges of performing Beethoven’s and Sibelius’s concertos.

Ahead of his trip to Tasmania, the young American virtuoso extols the joys of Tchaikovsky’s Concerto and defends it from the criticisms of its first dedicatee, Leopold Auer, and the venomous Eduard Hanslick.

Having observed both classical and jazz musicians at work, Guy Noble weighs up the similarities and differences.

Limelight's 2018 Australian Artist of the Year: Critics' Choice talks about her artistic principles, the luxury of choice and taking on America in the seasons to come.

Double bass player Alanna Jones and cellist Daniel Pini share their experiences of playing, teaching and exploring in China.

A rising star internationally, American soprano Amanda Majeski is about to make her Australian debut in the Beethoven Nine for SSO.

Ahead of her return to Australia, the German violinist tells Jo Litson how she used to listen to her parents make music under the grand piano, as well as her special connection to Hindemith.

"The cello is being treated as a cello, and not as some trumpet-violin gone crazy," the German cellist says ahead of the world premiere with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.