91Èȱ¬

As this year's Glyndebourne Festival opens, Tom Service visits a new art gallery and exhibition in the grounds of the Sussex opera house. Beginning a 3-year partnership with the contemporary art gallery White Cube, this season the new temporary space features a new collection of musically inspired paintings by the German artist Georg Baselitz. Tom takes a tour of the gallery with Glyndebourne’s Executive Chairman Gus Christie, White Cube’s curator Andrea Schlieker, and the architect behind the building, Andy Groarke.

During his tenure as the Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert’s ambition and sense of adventure has revolutionised the orchestra, both in terms of repertoire - with a focus on 20th and 21st century works, and the establishment in 2014 of the New York Biennial for new music - and in challenging the way classical music is performed and presented to today's audiences. His projects have included staging Ligeti’s apocalyptic opera Le Grand Macabre in his opening season, to the recent re-imagining of Stravinsky’s Petrushka. Tom talks to Gilbert following his announcement that he will be stepping down from his post in 2017.

Tom also meets the German-born composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher. With current posts including Music Director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Artist-in-Association with the 91Èȱ¬ Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Pintscher's career combines his work as a composer with that as a conductor of music from Beethoven to Boulez. He's also a major international influence for the promotion of new music as teacher, communicator and festival curator, whether in Paris or his current home town of New York.