We are so used to the sound of opera aria sung in their native language that when we run across translated versions, we’re often stopped in our tracks. English National Opera in London is (in)famous for its presentation of all

You’ve heard her voice but never seen her perform, she’s been in all of your favourite movies but you won’t recognize her. She’s been in Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Hobbit films 2 and 3,

In the nineteenth century Franz Liszt probably did more than any other composer for the genre of the piano transcription. His transcriptions and paraphrases made an important contribution to the development of piano music, with their technical challenges, innovative notation,

Every summer a rather special piano festival takes place at Schloss vor Husum in the remote North German seaside town of Husum in Schleswig-Holstein. It is not a festival which parades its star performers. Rather, its very remoteness and its

Swiss composer Arthur Honegger wrote three ‘symphonic movements,’ as he called them. The first, Pacific 231, written in 1923, brought the world of a great train to the concert stage.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was the manliest man in a manly world of manly composers! Creator of theatrical and musical dramas lasting the better part of eternity, his works are perpetually in danger of drowning in gigantic puddles of testosterone. As

Last time, I introduced you to the Columbia Music Typewriter. And rightfully, you must have thought that it really doesn’t look anything like a conventional typewriter or a machine operated via a keyboard. And it certainly looked rather cumbersome to

Why play an early or “period” piano? An instrument which may have significant limitations compared to a precisely made and carefully calibrated modern instrument, and surely “better” and infinitely more sturdy and reliable than an old piano?