wed 24/09/2025

David Nice

David Nice's picture
Bio
The classical music and opera editor of theartsdesk, David writes, lectures and broadcasts on music. A former music critic for The Guardian and The Sunday Correspondent, he has made regular appearances on BBC Radio 3, not least in the long-running series Building a Library. He has written short studies on Elgar, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky and the history of opera, and is currently working on the second volume of his Prokofiev biography for Yale University Press. He runs two Zoom lecture series, Opera in Depth on Mondays and a symphonies course on Thursdays.

Articles By David Nice

Sócrates review - pain and grief on the Brazilian coast

Read more...

Aurora Orchestra, Collon, West Handyside Canopy review – energy blasts outside Kings Cross Waitrose

Read more...

CBSO 100th Birthday Celebration online review - top musicians let down by sound and visuals

Read more...

The Royal Opera: Live in Concert review - Italianate fizz with a patch of flatness

Read more...

Doric Quartet, Bandstand Chamber Festival, Battersea Park review – radiance on a late summer evening

Read more...

BBC Proms live online: Jonathan Scott review - the organ as orchestra

Read more...

BBC Proms live online: BBC Singers, BBCSO, Oramo review – threnodies to an empty hall

Read more...

Sāvitri, Lauderdale House review - death and life in a Highgate garden

Read more...

Elena Ferrante: The Lying Life of Adults review - a universal Neapolitan adolescence

Read more...

Kaleidoscope Collective, Wigmore Hall online – playing with panache, as if to a live audience

Read more...

Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, Bold Tendencies review - visions under the car-park roof

Read more...

Charles Owen, Fidelio Orchestra Café review - high-profile, robust romantics

Read more...

Heart's Delight, Opera Holland Park review - a classy hour of operetta pops

Read more...

A masked elegy: portraits of string players at the Fidelio Orchestra Café

Read more...

Elektra, Salzburg Festival, Arte review - distancing, but not in the physical sense

Read more...

Louis Schwizgebel, Fidelio Orchestra Café review – gilt-edged postcards from around the world

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Slow Horses, Series 5, Apple TV+ review - terror, trauma and...

Fifth time around, Slow Horses continues to show the rest of the field a clean pair of heels. Or hooves. The adventures of Jackson Lamb (...

The Harder They Come, Stratford East review - still packs a...

The impact of great art is physical as much as it is psychological. I recall the first time I saw Perry Henzell’s 1972 film,...

Kohout, Spence, Braun, Manchester Camerata, Huth, RNCM, Manc...

The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester...

Album: Night Tapes - portals//polarities

“Helix” is the ninth track on portals//polarities. With this dramatic, acid house-leaning slab of shoegazing-infused...

Kerry Godliman, G-Live review - she's livid but deliver...

Kerry Godliman is livid, she tells us. Spider webs catching in her hair, the state of the world, her teenage children; you name it,...

Mark Hussey: Mrs Dalloway - Biography of a Novel review - ec...

Writing in her diary just over 100 years ago on 19th June 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote: “In this...

Jansen, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - profound and bracing...

Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra last seared us in Britten’s amazing Violin Concerto, with Vilde Frang as soloist, on the very...

Jakub Hrůša and Friends in Concert, Royal Opera review - fle...

Between bouts of that far from shabby, still shocking masterpiece Tosca, Royal Opera music director Jakub Hrůša ...