Artists tend to find inspiration everywhere; in food, unrequited love, the beauty of nature or even in a textbook on physics! It so happened when Bohuslav Martinů met Albert Einstein in December 1943. Both men had been forced to escape

When the string section changes from a lush sound to a percussive sound, we know that it’s all about pizzicato. The word in Italian means pinched or plucked and that’s what the string players are doing. They’ve put down their

Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra challenges the educated listener on several fronts, starting with the title itself. A concerto is a work for soloist and orchestra (or, perhaps, soloist versus orchestra!). What are we to think of a work where

In 1918, Stravinsky was in dire straits: the revolution in Russia meant the loss of his property (and income), WWI meant the death of his brother fighting in Romania, his wife was ill, and then there were the four children

It has long been suspected that intense sexual relationships are an impediment to artistic creativity. Don’t take my word for it, just read what Frédéric Chopin had to say about the disastrous effect the Countess Delphina Potocka had on his

‘Take care of yourself because nobody is going to do it for you’ Recently returning from her Paris Opéra debut, singing La Folie in Rameau’s Platée, and finding a moment of respite before a run of Il viaggio a Reims

We looked earlier at the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828) and how his ‘maja’ pictures influenced the 20th century Spanish composer Enrique Granados (1867-1916) to create his Goyescas.