Bela Bartók once famously said, “Competitions are for horses, not artists.” Bartók’s quip draws attention to the fact that judging music competitions in artistic performance and composition are fundamentally, and unavoidably an inexact science. Judged by experts with different tastes,

Today we seem to spend far too much of our daily lives trying to do things at high speed or in a hurry, without allowing ourselves time to stand still and think, or to look up occasionally to admire a

Classical music has transformative power, as perhaps you’ve noted in the previous article, which features large symphonic works. A piece of music can transport you to a different time and place and the collective response for and from the audience,

Arabescos From PALOMO, L.: Arabescos / Caribiana / Humoresca (2018) Released by Naxos Palomo: Arabescos Lorenzo Palomo has long established himself as one of Spain’s greatest contemporary composers, and these three recent works reveal the vivid themes and colours of

What does nothing sound like in music? Silence would be a good starting point, but then it wouldn’t be music. Amazingly, Haydn’s oratorio The Creation “opens with nothing short of a musical impossibility, the sound of infinite nothingness.” A contemporary

Annie Yim is a pianist who creates intriguing “conceptual concerts” of classical and contemporary music in collaboration with other artists. Her innovative concerts multiply artistic roles and dissolve boundaries across artistic disciplines and media. Her latest project, ‘Conceptual Concert in

“Never play faster than you can think” This well-known maxim by pianist, teacher and composer Tobias Matthay has a relevance both in day-to-day practice, and also in performance. When we practice, in our eagerness to move on to a new

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/26-1594) may have been born in the city of Palestrina, as indicated by his name, or may have been born in Rome, where his father may be the ‘Santo de Prenestino’ on the 1525 census. In