Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 67/2: Allegro leggiero From Mendelssohn: Songs without words (2014) Released by Harmonia Mundi Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte, Op. 67/2: Allegro leggieroThis programme illustrates four essential qualities of the music of Felix Mendelssohn. Music stripped of all

In the holiday season, there are distinctive holiday songs that seem to play incessantly in all the shopping malls. We hear them and they are expected to put us in a ‘holiday mood,’ but do we really listen to them?

When you think about time shifts in music, we think of Stravinsky, where in The Rite of Spring, there are sections where the time signature changes every measure. But what if there were a song, known to most people, where

Giacomo Puccini’s final opera was Turandot, set in exotic Peking. The story of a Chinese princess who keeps herself unattainable by the perplexing riddles she sets her prospective suitors, only to be brought down by a riddle that she, herself,

We’re blasted with the full force of the chorus right from the beginning of the show, accompanying a brutal prison drug search. This was one of many lights in which we saw the English National Opera chorus during ENO’s production

How and why is the city of Xian 15 million strong and host of the “Silk Road Festival“ so immaculate? The answer is an army of street sweepers working nonstop, 24 hours. It all starts in the morning with the

Now that we’ve looked at the Classics for Christmas, let’s look at some of the new music for the holiday season. When we get to more modern music, the American songs written in the 1940s and 1950s capture our ear.

I can empathise with Roxanna Panufnik. She, too, is a morning person. ‘Anything difficult that I have to do I schedule for Monday morning; it’s when I’m at my complete and utter freshest!’ I catch her after a stint of