String Quartet No. 1, “Songs of Forgiveness” I. Unmoved Movement From NOWAKOWSKI, M.: Blood, Forgotten / String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 / A Uśnijże mi, uśnij (2017) Released by Naxos Nowakowski: String Quartet No. 1, “Songs of Forgiveness” –

Shanghai – the beautiful city on the Yangtze River – was one of the first major cities of China opened to the West in 1842 and seems to have always had one foot firmly in China while, at the same

Bass Valerian Ruminski was recently in Hong Kong as Colline in a production of La bohème. Next, you might see him in Calgary in Eugene Onegin, or in Geneva as Dr Bartolo in the Barber of Seville. Or, you might

Under the guidance of his long-time teacher Tatiana Zelikman, Daniil Trifonov won a number of prizes at smaller competitions. Yet, Zelikman was careful not to push her young charge into a pianistic career. “She was afraid,” Trifonov explained, “that it

It’s of some tribute to librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) that 140 years after their first comic operas hit the stage, we can still find a great deal of humour in their works and many of

When Ludwig, or Louis Spohr (1784-1859) died at the age of 75, Johannes Brahms lamented that the last of the great masters had died. This seems high praise indeed for a composer whose posthumous neglect is shockingly at odds with

They all die at the end, those poor opera women. Madama Butterfly kills herself, Tosca dies off the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo, and Carmen has a face-off with her former soldier lover.

“What do you actually do?” and “What is your day job?” are all-too familiar questions to musicians. People are also endlessly fascinated about practising – “so how much practising do you actually do?” – and imagine we spend most of