Piano accompanists are, rather like page turners, the unsung heroes and heroines of the music world, often receiving smaller concert fees and less prominent billing than the singers and instrumentalists with whom they work. Often unfairly regarded as “failed soloists”,

I’d never had one…until today. A dense, dark grey ball the size of a quarter, rolling around inside my cello. I had been practicing the Spanish piece by Gaspar Cassadó Requiebros full of passion and fervor. While wailing on the

Poeme tragique Op.34 From Alexander Scriabin: Preludes, Etudes & Sonates nos. 4 & 5 (2018) Released by Harmonia Mundi Scriabin: Poeme tragique Op.34Scriabin occupies a place apart in the history of Russian music: refusing influences from the folkloric tradition, his

With the zodiac of the Pig taking center stage in the Chinese calendar in 2019, I decided to go on the hunt for “pig music” in the Western musical context. We all know about the Carnival of the Animals, Peter

Béla Bartók did not see the premiere of his 3rd Piano Concerto. After completing the score—he wrote the Hungarian words “the end” after the last measures of this concerto—Bartók was transferred to a West Side hospital where he died four

“Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into another, but why this happens I don’t

Maybe they’re your secret reading. Maybe they’re your guide to life in general or your source of the perfect wry joke. As much as they inspire you, they’ve inspired composers as well. On Broadway, we’ve had musicals such as Li’l

Increasingly rushed for time, Wolfgang Amadeus writes to his father on 5 February 1783, “I have received your last letter, and hope you have also gotten mine. With regard to the symphonies, especially the last, pray let me have them