We all have heard stories of how much Salieri and Mozart hated each other. Well, they really didn’t! Clearly they were competitors in the high-pressure, high-reward musical environment of Vienna with Salieri holding all the important government positions, but there

Antonin Dvořák composed his Sixth Symphony explicitly for the Vienna Philharmonic and its chief conductor Hans Richter in a matter of months. After a number of postponements, the work finally premiered with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra on March 25, 1881,

In a sense, Chopin (1810-1849) occupied two worlds. In Poland, he was Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin of Warsaw. And, after age 21, when he had settled in Paris, he was Frédéric François Chopin. This Polish/European duality drove his life.

The piano has undergone all sorts of innovations and embellishments since its invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori in the early 1700s. The most significant advances in the piano’s design were in response to demands from pianists and composers for a sturdier

We are exquisitely attuned to sound from our very beginnings. In the womb, a baby eavesdrops on their mother’s soft cooing voice. When she starts singing lullabies, sound leads us to language, and when she rhythmically rocks her child it

The premiere performance of Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony on 23 March 1886 immediately brought forth strong opinions on both sides of the critical divide. Somewhat surprisingly, the fierce and feared critic César Cui liked the work, and favorably commented on the

Keyboard Sonata No. 77 in F sharp Minor From SOLER, A.: Keyboard Sonatas Nos. 75-86 (2018) Released by Naxos Soler: Keyboard Sonata No. 77 in F sharp MinorFor the last 25 years of his life Antonio Soler occupied the distinguished

Dedicated to Clara Schumann, Brahms’ Klavierstücke Op.118 were written in 1893 again at Bad Ischl during his summer sojourn and are probably his most well-known opus nowadays. Julius August Philipp Spitta, a German musicologist, wrote to Brahms after receiving the