Judith Weir: Ascending into Heaven From Ascendit Deus – Music for Ascensiontide & Pentecost (2015) Released by Harmonia Mundi Judith Weir: Ascending into HeavenAscension and Pentecost are among the chief feasts of the Christian year. The Choir of Clare College,

The unfinished church of “Sagrada Familia” in Barcelona is Antoni Gaudí’s exceptional creative contribution to the development of architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. George Orwell called it “one of the most hideous buildings in the world!”

The Alex Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, near Guilford, Surry, holds an interesting variety of pianos, most with composer connections. When we look at a composer’s piano, for the most part, we can only imagine what works were created on it.

The power of music is just awesome! Trumpets shattered the walls of Jericho, and when Orpheus tenderly tickled his lute, his dead wife Euridice returned to life. Given such enormous powers, you better be careful because listening to music can

The Alex Cobbe collection in England is the largest collection of composers’ piano in the world. Three of the most important pieces of the collection are the pianos owned by Chopin, each of which was used during the final year

The Alex Cobbe collection outside Guildford, England, holds a unique piano created for a unique performer. During Franz Liszt’s trips to Florence after 1873, he was loaned a piano by its maker, Carlo Ducci. This isn’t a multi-foot grand piano

The Alec Cobbe collection, housed at Hatchlands Park, near Guildford, Surrey, England, holds pianos owned by a number of different composers, such as Haydn’s Longman & Brodrip piano; Mahler’s 1836 Graf piano; Elgar’s 1844 Broadwood piano; Chopin’s 1848 Pleyel, used

“Memoirs of an Amnesiac” When eccentricity and classical music are used in the same sentence, Erik Satie (1866-1925) immediately comes to mind. Irreverent, disrespectful, contemptuous of tradition, forcefully direct and brutally honest, Satie famously wrote underneath his self-portrait, “I have