Keeping Thoroughly Good, Thoroughly Good
No patron. No institution. Just keeping the lights on with a Ko-Fi tip.
THOROUGHLY GOOD CLASSICAL MUSIC
thoroughly good
classical music isn't difficult.
it's just music
Thoroughly Good is an independent home for classical music commentary, reflection, and criticism — mildly obsessive, resolutely independent, and dedicated to the act of deep listening.
20 years of thoroughly good classical music
reviews, news, and interviews
EDITORS PICK
Review – Dunedin Consort’s Markus Passion at Aldeburgh Festival 2025
Bach’s Markus-Passion from Dunedin Consort: phenomenal, enthralling, and profound
Review – Colin Matthews’ A Visit to Friends
A beautifully coordinated work, craft and musical ingenuity, easy to admire, with a hint of ambiguity thrown in too.
The orchestra at the hospital bedside: why this podcast had to be different
Documenting the Britten Sinfonia’s collaboration with NHS Foundation Arts Residency at Addenbrooke’s Hospital for the Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast.
MORE GOOD STUFF
LATEST POSTS
Keeping Thoroughly Good, Thoroughly Good
22nd May 2026
No patron. No institution. Just keeping the lights on with a Ko-Fi tip.
Review – Britten Sinfonia: Britten in America at Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2026
21st May 2026
A concert, an anniversary, a building. This was Norwich quietly reasserting its place in the composer’s story.
Review – Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival
20th May 2026
How do we react when connection breaks down and our world disintegrates? We likely respond as though the world isn’t watching us.
Review – Feldman & Beckett’s Words & Music at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026
19th May 2026
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival have made a bold choice this year in programming works by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated how well they know their audience too.
GOOD CONCERTS
CONCERT REVIEWS
Keeping Thoroughly Good, Thoroughly Good
22nd May 2026
No patron. No institution. Just keeping the lights on with a Ko-Fi tip.
Review – Britten Sinfonia: Britten in America at Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2026
21st May 2026
A concert, an anniversary, a building. This was Norwich quietly reasserting its place in the composer’s story.
Review – Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival
20th May 2026
How do we react when connection breaks down and our world disintegrates? We likely respond as though the world isn’t watching us.
Review – Feldman & Beckett’s Words & Music at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival 2026
19th May 2026
Sheffield Chamber Music Festival have made a bold choice this year in programming works by Morton Feldman and Samuel Beckett. In doing so, they’ve demonstrated how well they know their audience too.
Review – United Strings of Europe: Purcell Room, 9 May 2026
17th May 2026
Guest reviewer Caroline Potter on United Strings of Europe’s Purcell Room debut — a programme exploring music, deafness, and what it means to listen.
Review – Carice Singers at Kings Place: Steve Martland reconsidered
15th May 2026
A Kings Place concert series dedicated to Steve Martland is challenging assumptions created by the aesthetic his promotion leaned on when the composer was alive.
Review – Papillons at Southbank’s Multitudes
2nd May 2026
Papillons at Multitudes was multimedia production that mirrored the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies across three miniatures which over the course of 70 minutes saw a sonic metamorphosis of cellist Laura van der Heijden’s playing from amplified strings to electronic distortion. It kind of worked.
LATEST PODCAST
LOOKING AHEAD
bbc proms 2025
Review – Key Changes: Radio 3’s Essential History of Classical Music
Key Changes confounds expectations — which, given what Radio 3 needs right now, is exactly what it needed to make.
Review – BBC Proms 2025: Mahler’s Symphony No. 7
A sprawling, sometimes unsettling, ecstatic sound-world that asks only for your attention — and gives everything in return. Not for decoding. Unless, of course, you want to.
Review – BBC Proms 2025: Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
A compelling Proms debut from pianist Nicholas McCarthy in a performance of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, marked by glassy lyricism and a revealing, if occasionally cautious, orchestral mix.
BBC Proms 2025: First Night of the Proms 2025
Review and reflections from the first night of the BBC Proms, with original photography, streaming links, and Thoroughly Good introductions.
OPINION
OPINION
26th October 2025
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12th September 2025
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21st August 2025
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21st July 2024
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16th August 2021