Tikhon Khrennikov (1913-2007) was a very powerful man indeed. During the 1930s, he was hailed as the leading Soviet composer, and by 1948, Khrennikov was nominated as General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers. That powerful state-created organization for

On 27 July 2024, we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ferruccio Busoni’s (1866-1924) death. At the time of his passing, he was widely remembered as a pianist with legendary technique, “but his activities as composer and author usually received only

Sergeant John de Lancie, born on 26 July 1921 in Berkely, California, eventually became the principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. However, his greatest claim to fame dates from the time he was stationed in the village of Garmisch Partenkirchen

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) strongly resisted experimental music trends during the 1920s. Actually, he has frequently been compared to Brahms, who was also unaffected by the fashions and dictates of his time. Both, in fact, continued to compose expressive, lyrical music

After the death of his mother in September 1902 and frustration at the lack of progress on his Second Symphony, Edward Elgar and his wife decamped from their small, rented cottage near Malvern and retreated to the Italian Riviera in

Leon Fleisher is “one of the most refined and transcendent musicians the United States has ever produced.” A child prodigy of the highest calibre, Fleisher couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t playing the piano, and Pierre Monteux called him

For all that the world assumes a frantic Christmas cheer, there remain those corners of the world where loneliness and cold seem to rule. If Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin is a song cycle of spring and summer, albeit with a

Although she and her talents were central to the work of her husband and creative partner Giacomo Rossini, there is no English language biography of Isabella Colbran. We want to change that. So consider this a basic overview of her