The Russian composer and pianist Alexander Scriabin, born on 6 January 1872 in Moscow, had a distinct flair for the dramatic and the mystical. Initially inspired by Chopin, he soon broke away from tradition, creating music that was intensely emotional,

Lebanese pianist Walid Akl (1945-1997) made his career in France, moving there at age 17 and studying at the Marguerite Long Academy. He did further study at the Conservatoire Nationale Supérieure de Musique de Paris, working with Germaine Mounier, Yvonne

In last week’s article, ‘Music and Graphics,’ we dove into the exciting realms of possibility opened up by “graphic scores” – musical compositions that are notated in nontraditional, visually expressive ways. After a whistlestop tour through the nascence of graphic

American composer Elie Siegmeister (1909–1991) accepted an invitation to contribute to a concert series being developed for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Concerts of music by American composers were set up, and Siegmeister’s contribution was a work he’d

Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla L’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France The Visionary Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is not just a conductor; she is a visionary, shaping the future of classical music with each movement of her hands. At the helm of major orchestras across the

When we truly respect someone’s intellect, our first instinct is to treat them with the utmost reverence: to place them on a pedestal and see them as somehow more than human. With composers we admire, especially those well cemented in

Isolated from the surrounding carnage of WWI, Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) began to synthesise elements of German Romanticism and Eastern Exoticism through an exploration of Greek mythical subject matters and concepts from the French fin de siècle of Debussy and Ravel.

It was December 1950: composer Morton Feldman was doodling on a napkin, waiting for John Cage to finish cooking some wild rice. What Feldman had been drawing on this scrap of paper stuck with him and eventually became his landmark