Welcome to our September issue. As you will have already seen from opening this month’s magazine, we are conducting a Reader Survey for the first time since 2014.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve both our magazine and website, and keep it relevant. To do that, we need to keep up to date with who you are, and discover more about your reading and listening tastes. What do you enjoy most about the content we currently offer? Are there things you would like to see more of? We would be grateful if you could find a few minutes to complete the survey. Do feel free to include any other information you’d like to share with us, then return it to us by post before October 31. Alternatively, you can fill it out online.

To thank you for your valuable input, we are offering you the chance to win the Maria Callas Live box set, featuring remastered live recordings from 1949 to 1964. The 42-CD collection comes with reissues of three Callas DVDs. On top of that, 20 readers who return the survey will win a copy of Omega Ensemble’s Unexpected News: Nico Muhly and Philip Glass.

Our cover story this month takes a look at online streaming – something that several readers have expressed an interest in. Angus McPherson investigates our changing listening habits and how they are affecting the classical music industry, from record labels to composers and performers. While many classical music lovers still prefer to own physical CDs, streaming has now become the most popular way that people are listening to music. Angus outlines the various streaming options, and explores how innovators are making streaming more classical-friendly. So if you haven’t already gone digital, give it a go, and let us know what you think!

Jo Litson
Editor

Read + Listen

Grab a copy of our latest magazine and hit play on the first in our Read + Listen playlist series. Like what you hear? You can find reviews for all of the albums featured here on our website.

The features

A new spin on Digital Music

As online streaming becomes the dominant way people listen to music, Angus McPherson investigates how these changes are affecting the classical music industry, from the effects on labels, artists and listeners, to the innovators making streaming classical-friendly.

Kronos Quartet

The American legends will perform a “live documentary” at next month’s Melbourne International Arts Festival. But what is it? A concert, a film or a lecture?

Peake Performance

English actor Maxine Peake makes her Australian stage debut in a play about IVF this month, before starring in an immersive show about the Velvet Underground’s Nico.

Russian roulette

The life and death of Tchaikovsky in seven symphonies: Semyon Bychkov and Clive Paget explore what we can learn about the man by listening to the music.

Major Tom

As a young man Tom Stoppard was one of the rock stars of British theatre. Simon Phillips talks to Jo Litson about why, for Stoppard, the brain is so sexy.

Invisible Cities

Leo Warner and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui explain how they have used every trick in the book to bring Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities to the stage.

The Regulars

News

Castellucci's Requiem heads to Adelaide Festival

What I'm Listening To

Harpist Marshall McGuire

Five Questions for...

Composer Nigel Westlake

Around the world

The Black Clown impresses the Big Apple

My Instrument

Erin Helyard's harpsichord

Guy Noble

Guy Noble's Soapbox

On microbes, Mahler and the moon landing

Opera Column

Greg Eldridge gets to grips with Aribert Reimann

Did you hear about...

Mad King Ludwig's arboreal concerts

Backstage with...

Director Mark Dornford-May

World Premiere

Cathy Milliken mixes Walt Whitman with weaving

Rising Star

Violinist Christian Li

Interview

Countertenor Philippe Jaroussky

Music Competitions

Why are so many musicians happy to be judged?

Interview

Mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins

Composer of the Month

The no longer neglected Charles Villiers Stanford

Musical Journey

Bonn: Birthplace of Beethoven

Sound Waves

Tristan und Mike: Virginia Read on recording Wagner with WASO

Panorama

This month's round-up of everything worth experiencing in dance, theatre, visual art and film

Broadcast Guide

The best of classical music and arts across ABC and independent stations this month

My Music

Satirist Mark Humphries

Special offer

Since 2009, Palace Opera & Ballet has given Australian arts lovers direct access to what’s on stage at Europe’s finest opera houses. The 2019/20 season will be no exception, presenting 11 new performances in cinemas nationally, commencing with two screenings next month from La Scala: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (October 4 – 9) and Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty (October 25 – 30).

Subscribe, give or renew a Limelight subscription this month for your chance to win two tickets to see all nine of the productions listed here, valid at the screenings of your choice.

Discover Limelight's most-read arts stories of 2023.