What the audience doesn’t know behind the scenes typically won’t hurt their enjoyment of a performance. But these recent mishaps chill a performer’s bones even if in retrospect we like recounting these stories! A dear friend of mine, award-winning actress,
September, 2023
The performers on this new recording of music for viola and piano from Brazil open their notes with a very strong accusation: ‘Violists can be guilty of relying too much on a short list of tried-and-true pieces’. Their response is
The 2023 edition of the Proms, “the world’s greatest classical music festival”, has just ended. As usual, this year’s two-month season of concerts was punctuated by conversations about audience noise and the now rather tedious rants about applause between movements.
Say the phrase “the Gershwin siblings” and any music lover immediately thinks of George and Ira Gershwin, two brothers famous for co-writing some of the most famous songs in the Great American Songbook. But George and Ira also had a
A féerie was a French theatrical genre and, as a ‘fairy play’ combined music, dance, mime, and acrobatics, in a fantasy plot set off by spectacular scenery and stage effects. Some critics noted that the visuals, with the transformational scene
Felix Mendelssohn’s eight volumes of Songs without Words were written between 1829 and 1845 and in those sixteen years, Mendelssohn not only created a new genre but became its boldest exponent. He was followed by his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, and
Mozart fell in love with one. Another one caused a scandal by moving in with him before they were married. Yet another premiered the role of The Queen of the Night in his opera The Magic Flute. And one helped