Every music history buff knows the infamous London operatic showdown of the 1720s. It was the ultimate Baroque cage match: the heavyweight George Frideric Handel in one corner, and the elegant, Italian hitmaker Giovanni Battista Bononcini in the other. The

Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Moonlight Sonata is one of the most famous pieces of music ever written. Even if you’re not a classical music lover, you have almost certainly heard it – in a film, in an ad, or drifting out

In all, Francis Poulenc composed 15 Improvisations between 1932 and 1959. They emerged not as a continuous set but as four volumes. Musically, they balance music-hall charm with the composer’s delicate lyricism. Improvisation No. 15 in C minor, subtitled “L’hommage

French violinist Ginette Neveu was widely considered to be one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century: a prodigy who graduated from the Paris Conservatoire as a child, beat David Oistrakh in an international competition at 15, and spent

The narrator of Florence Price‘s achingly tender song “Brown Arms (To Mother)” seems to reach for something just out of reach. It is one of the most quietly devastating songs in the American art song repertoire – and once you

Azerbaijani composer Kara Karayev (also Gara Garayev) (1918–1982) began his musical education in his home city of Baku and, at age 20, was accepted into the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied composition. He returned to Baku after graduation and began

Italian composer Maurizio Guernieri (b. 1962) wanted to explore the world of wind instruments, which he felt, as a string musician, was an unfamiliar corner of the musical world. His 2019 work Musicografie (Images in Music) starts each movement with

Composer Gustav Mahler is famous for his monumental symphonies that reshaped late-Romantic music. Yet he wrote his final symphonies in the shadow of a devastating tragedy: the 1907 death of his daughter Maria Anna Mahler, nicknamed Putzi. The loss shattered