Behind the scenes

134 Posts
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Life on the Road II
Day 1 All ready to go! Heloise (singer) and I are meeting at Euston station to take the train to Glasgow, where we’ll be meeting Anne and Marianne (harp and double bass), who are driving from Reading with the big
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Life on the Road I
In my Artist of the Month interviews, I always ask my interviewee how they find the travel. These people travel for a living, often having five concerts in as many different countries, and all within a couple of weeks. No
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Daniil Trifonov and Sergei Babayan
“His deep love of music sets him apart”
Under the guidance of his long-time teacher Tatiana Zelikman, Daniil Trifonov won a number of prizes at smaller competitions. Yet, Zelikman was careful not to push her young charge into a pianistic career. “She was afraid,” Trifonov explained, “that it
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Daniil Trifonov and Tatiana Zelikman
“Mozart and Chopin develop the soul of the musician”
In 2011 Martha Argerich famously said about Daniil Trifonov “What he does with his hands is technically incredible. It’s also his touch—he has tenderness and also the demonic element. I never heard anything like that.” Possessing monstrous technique and lustrous
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Edouard Pécourt (1925-2008): Tango Obsession
Noah, the hero of the Bible’s Genesis flood narrative, was probably the most famous collector of all times. After all, he collected two of every living animal and housed them on his ark! However, from cocktail sticks to barbed wire,
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Playing in the Band
We saw a wonderful cartoon the other day and realized that we’d been in those practice rooms and we had heard music by those composers. You can hear some of this kind of playing by the fabled Portsmouth Sinfonia. This
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How to recover gracefully
I was at a performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony the other night and when we came to the final movement, things were a bit odd. The soprano walked out while the orchestra was playing, sort of stood around for a
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Slave Pianist Sensation: “Blind Tom”
“Blind Tom,” as he was generally known, was born into slavery in Columbus, Georgia in 1848. He was sold with his family during infancy to General James Neil Bethune, a country lawyer and newspaper publisher. The blind child was considered
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