In the world of classical music, dedications can serve as a window into a composer’s life, telling us who they cared about or who they wanted to impress…or both. Today, we’re looking at the best piano sonatas dedicated to women

Why do some of the world’s greatest composers stop writing music long before their deaths? In the popular imagination, composers write until their dying breath. Everyone who has seen the movie Amadeus remembers the scene where Mozart is on his

One of the wonderful parts of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker is the divertissements set in the Kingdom of Sweets. First, we have the Spanish Dance, setting us up for that wonderful drink from South America, Chocolate. Even the

For Japanese-English classical pianist and conductor Mitsuko Uchida, performing is not simply an aesthetic exercise but a moral discipline. Her interpretation is not an assertive personality but an ethical act, grounded in responsibility to the composer, fidelity to the score,

It seems to me that stand sharing is dead! Perhaps it started with the covid epidemic, but the advent and proliferation of iPad tablets is certainly contributing to going solo on a stand. My chamber music colleagues are using them

Ludwig van Beethoven is famous for composing deeply emotional music. After all, the nickname of one of his most famous melodies is “Ode to Joy.” But which of his works are sad? And which of those are the saddest? Today,

When William Christie was born on 19 December 1944 in Buffalo, New York, few could have predicted that he would become one of the most influential champions of French cultural heritage since the Enlightenment. Yet this soft-spoken American, armed with

The story of Édith Piaf (1915-1963) is one of those rare and tragic sagas that seem too extraordinary to be true. The tale of a small, frail girl who grew up in the gritty streets of Paris and ascended to