Composer Joyce Tang spoke with us last week and we were delighted to meet a composer with a background in electro-acoustic music and musicology. Joyce did master’s degrees in both composition and electro-acoustic music at Hong Kong Baptist University and

We classical musicians have idiosyncratic behaviors when it comes to eating. Did you know that composer Eric Satie ate only things that were white?—eggs, sugar, rice, turnips, coconuts and white cheese. Once Jean Sibelius was due to conduct a concert

Now that we’ve had a complete tour of the orchestra with a look at all the principal instruments, we can do one last look at the rarely-used instruments that are called for by composers. In the strings, we have the

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) wrote his orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in 1946 as a commission for an educational film on the instruments of the orchestra. Britten used a theme from the Baroque British composer Henry Purcell

Recently pianist Lang Lang played a recital to a packed house. Nature called. He left the stage to pee. Hundreds of spectators started to leave thinking the concert was over. Lang Lang soon came back to the diminishing numbers in

20-year old Romanian cellist Andrei Ioniță was awarded the Gold Medal in the cello section of the 2015 Tchaikovsky Competition. A laureate of many other competitions, he also took first prize at the Aram Khachaturian International Competition in 2013, and

Sweden’s best Romantic composer Franz Berwald (1796-1868) holds the dubious distinction of being one of the most neglected composers in music history. In fact, he was so obscure that in 1946 the Swedish postal service, given the choice between putting

Sonata in D Major for Piano 4 Hands, Op. 6 II. Rondo: Moderato From BEETHOVEN, L. van: Piano Duets (Complete) (A. and S. Hamann) (2012) Released by Grand Piano Beethoven: Sonata in D Major for Piano 4 Hands, Op. 6